The Gulf
by Nadie2
Summary: Sam and Jack get together during the Gulf War. Daniel and Janet end up together. Teal'c meets an OC. Everyone has plenty of children, per my usual.
1. Part 1 Chapter 1

**I did some major revisions since my characters were drifting and I had some pretty major inconsistencies. I hope this makes it better. I also plan on added some chapters. I'll put a * by chapters are new or have parts added to them.**

**AU-A couple of big changes that lead to other changes here****,**** folks.**

**1\. Sam broke up with Jonas much earlier in the relationship, while still at the academy, and before they got engaged.**

**2\. Jack never met Sara.****He has, up to the start of this story, had no real long term relationships.**

**3\. Sam and Jack have their first encounter during Desert Storm.**

**Part 1: December 1990, Iraqi desert**

Jack O'Neill was going to die. He could feel it. He'd been close to death more than once, but none of those times felt like this.

It wasn't like he'd expected it to be. There was no life flashing before his eyes. He felt no need to make a long speech of goodbye (not that there was anyone to give it to, the joys of flying one man aircraft). Death wasn't noble, and it didn't make him understand everything about the world.

It was just cold, and as painful as hell.

And then there she is, her blond hair like a halo. Halo... so she must be an angel. Well, hell, if he'd known this was what heaven was like, he would have offed himself years ago.

"Angel," he whispers.

"Sir, you've lost a lot of blood, try not to speak," his angel replies.

Damn, why is his angel calling him 'sir'? Maybe he's in the wrong heaven. Some guys would get off on this, maybe, having authority over a woman. But that's not for him.

He doesn't even like it when his men call him 'sir'; he prefers that they and he use the last name instead of rank.

"Sir, you have to stay with me, focus," he angel demands.

And he feels her putting pressure on her wounds. Damn, that hurts. Wait, it still hurts. So he's not in heaven, because the pain is supposed to stop when you die. Right? God, he hopes so. Because if heaven could hurt, eternity was too damn long.

"Damn, F-15 ran out of fuel," he explains.

"I know, sir, it was the weather," she says as she ties something around his wounds.

"We can't get out of here," he tells her. She has to know they are doomed.

She smiles, "Sir, when your plane went down, my squad leader ordered me to land, and save your ass."

"You're a pilot?" he asks.

She heaves him up with more force than necessary, "I also hold the arm wrestling record in my squadron."

"Then you are my dream woman," he says with a semi-lucid smirk.

Her somewhat limited medical training informs her that this man is going to pass out soon. "Sir, you've lost a lot of blood, so I'm going to ignore that comment."

"But you are beautiful, angel," he says, reaching one delirious hand up to stroke her cheek.

Normally Sam hates nicknames, especially cutesy ones. She'd broken up with her last boyfriend for the offense of repeatedly calling her "Babe" in an obnoxious possessive way. But somehow she likes the name 'angel'.

"Come on, sir," she says, heaving the man into the plane. Once he's in the plane, she does one more check on her patient before getting back into the pilot seat.

He grabs her arm, "I was sure I was dying, and when I saw you I knew I was in heaven."

"That's an old line, sir," she replies.

-0-0-0-

Samantha Carter never really liked hospitals.

She'd gotten very sick when she was little. She didn't really remember it, but her mother had claimed that's where her fear of hospitals began. They'd banished Sam's family from the room and held her down to take her blood while she screamed for her mother.

Sam's fear of hospitals had gotten a lot worse when she was fourteen, and she'd sat in a hospital for two days watching her mother slip form life after her car accident.

Her father had done everything to get her out of that room, to sleep or to eat or to shower.

But as much as Sam hates hospitals, as much as she hated watching her mother die, there are more important things than her hatred. Her mother didn't deserve to die alone, and she could hold her mother's hand so she would know that someone was with her.

Death was different than she thought it would be. She always thought it would be loud, or obvious, or grand. But death was just empty. She'd known right away though. Her mother had just laid silent for two days, unconscious. But the second that she died, Sam had known.

She'd left her mother's hospital room the second it happened. Being near to death was something she never wanted to be again.

His eyes flutter open, "Angel, there is a whole war going on out there, what are you doing standing guard over my bedside?"

"The mission is over, and I'm on leave," she tells him.

"Did we win?" he asks boyishly. She can't help but smirk at the inappropriateness of his question.

"Some mission objectives were accomplished, but the main one was a failure," she admits.

"And you got nothing better to do with your leave than hover over an old man's bed?" he teases.

"Well, being a guardian angel is a big responsibility, sir," she says.

"Jack," he corrects.

"I'm glad to see you conscious, Jack," she says.

"Listen, when I'm a little bit better, I have to buy you a drink for saving my life," he says.

She blushes.

"Unless you don't drink," he adds, confused by her look.

"Actually I win about as many drinking contests as arm wrestling contests," Sam admits.

"My kind of girl," Jack says, then another explanation for her bashfulness occurs to him, "Unless you're already someone's girl, Angel."

"I'm no one's girl," she says with an edge of offense, "And I got rid of my last boyfriend for precisely the kind of male chauvinism you just demonstrated."

"I'll just have to make sure not to display it again," he says with a smirk.

"You're pretty sure of yourself for someone in a hospital bed," she says.

"Well I've got a lovely Florence Nightingale Effect going for me right now. I've got to take advantage of it while it lasts."

"Oh, and he's got a brain behind that handsome face," she says.

"Well, they don't promote based on looks. If they did, you'd be a hundred-star general, Angel," he says.

She shakes her head, "Hundred-star general? Do you find girls who actually enjoy that sort of hyperbole?"

"Not really," he says, and there is a bit of honest sadness in his eyes.

She wishes the teasing had stayed light. She realizes that he's all alone. And that it's not his choice. Not like it is for her. Sam had never had a problem with getting someone to date her. It was just getting someone worth her time.

"I don't know you took a cliché like the heaven pick-up line and it came off… less lame than you'd expect," she says.

"Less lame, exactly what I was aiming for," he says.

"Sir, you're awake? Would you like your dinner?" a nurses interrupts.

Jack nods, and the nurse brings in soup and jello.

"Hey! The supply manager swore to me they were out of jello a week ago!" Sam protests.

"Maybe they got some more," he says with a shrug.

"He told me that he was going tell me when he got some more," she pouts.

"Have mine," he offers.

"Sir, you were in a plane crash today," she informs him.

"It was not a crash! It was an emergency landing!" he exclaims.


	2. Part 1 Chapter 2

"Jack, I'm going on a patrol today," she says.

"Think you could shove me in your field bag, Angel?" he pleads.

"You might weigh me down," she says with a giggle. God, he's come to love her giggles over the last couple of days. He's not very good at making jokes, and he knows that he's not very good at making jokes, but she is willing to laugh at anything that he puts before her.

"Come on, no officer is worth their salt who can't carry their own body weight on a mission."

"Taking you along would result in me carrying a lot more than my body weight."

"Are you calling me fat?" he asks with false incredulous tone.

"Of course not, sir, but you plus my field pack would be over my weight," she says.

"But just barely," he says.

"Right, just barely," she agrees with a giggle.

"Well, I'm getting sprung from this place tonight, so I was thinking we could share a meal, something besides jello."

"Oh, goodie, is it going to be MRE?" she asks with fake enthusiasm.

"I hope I can do a little better than that," he says.

"Right, and you owe me a drink as well," she says.

"Fly well, angel girl."

-0-0-0-

Sam's exhausted, and dirty from the mission. All she can think about is a shower, and a nap. She's figures she'll shower and then cancel her date with Jack O'Neill.

But that thought flees from her mind when she enters her quarters. Most officers slept four to a tent. It's better than barracks quarters, which are fifteen to a tent. But as the only female officer in the squadron, Sam got her own tent. When she enters her tent to grab her clothes for after her shower, she sees a note.

"Officer mess, 2000."

And her heart soars. She feels way more for this man that she should. And she knows… if she cancels tonight, he's never going to believe it's just because she's tired. He's going to take it as rejection, and she already knows that he's been rejected enough in his life.

She can't hurt him. And she doesn't even feel that tired anymore.

She glances at her watch, and discovers that she really doesn't have much time. She grabs her shower bag, and heads for the bathrooms.

-0-0-0-

It's too much, Jack decides. She's going to walk into this officer mess, and freak out. He's going to scare her off.

He stands up to pull some of the crepe paper off the wall.

"What are you doing?" Angel's voice stops him.

"It's too much," he turns, flinching, with the decoration still in his hand.

She giggles at his bashfulness. He's kind of old to pull off that lost little boy look, but nonetheless he does it well. "I think it's just enough. But isn't it going to confuse the other officers that come in here?"

"There will be no other officers coming in here."

"What did you do?" she asks coyly.

"I just… asked them not to come in," he says.

She giggles again.

"I, uh… don't know what you like to drink, but I only have one choice."

"Guinness," she says as he pulls out the bottle.

"Being an Irishman from Chicago, I couldn't very well have a different favorite booze."

"I usually don't drink beer, whiskey or vodka normally. My dad sometimes had one after work."

Jack nods his head, "My old man had a lot more than one."

Sam flinches and turns away for a second. And he wishes that he hadn't revealed whatever offended her.

"What's wrong?"

"My mom was killed by a drunk driver," she says softly.

"God, I'm sorry," he whispers. There is a long pause. He really doesn't want to share any more about his past, but he knows the scales are unequal. He has to share something more about himself to even things up, to give what is between them a chance. "My old man, he, ah… he didn't drive when he was drunk." He almost loses his courage, and stops there, but then he continues, "But he did other things, just about as bad."

"He hit you?" she asks with furious indignation.

Jack shakes his head, "My mom, though. She left him when I was about thirteen. We had a couple of really tough years. We left with nothing, and she didn't have any jobs or skills. She was a stay-at-home mother her whole life. Suddenly she had to get a job, and pay the bills, and… lots of other stuff she didn't know how to do."

"I'm so sorry, sir," she whispers.

"That's part of the reason I joined the Air Force. It was a way to make pretty good money right out of high school."

"Right out of high school? But you're an officer," she says, confused.

He has a bemused smirk.

"You're a mustang?" she asks in shock.

He nods, a bit bashfully.

"Well, color me impressed," she says.

"I think I should be more impressed by you. I bet you got straight As all through high school, and then went on to pull the same grades at the Academy."

"Did you read my personal file?" she asks, a little creeped out, and moving back from him.

"Am I really that good a guesser?" he asks.

"You really didn't read my file?" she asks.

"Angel, I don't even know your name."

"It's…" she begins, but he cuts her off, "Nope, don't tell me, more fun this way."

She grins for a second, before she frowns. "So you're really not even going to bother to learn my name. I'm that unimportant to you?"

"You are not a ship passing in the night, angel," he tells her seriously.

She stares at him for a few seconds before she says, "So what kind of MRE are we having today? I bet it tastes like chicken. They all do."

"Yeah, what we have is a step above MRE's," he says, handing her a plate.

"This looks like real food," she says in shock.

"Well, I sure hope so," he says with a smile.

"I know, I just mean… you don't see real food on base very often."

"You ever talk to the cook, Airman Michaels?"

She shakes her head.

"He went to the culinary arts institute before he enlisted."

"No offense, but you wouldn't know it from his cooking."

"Well, the first thing they'll teach you at the culinary arts institute is that your meal is only going to be as good as your ingredients. But if you get some ingredients to him he can work wonders."

"You know this much about everyone in your squadron?" She asks.

He smiles, "Michaels isn't in my squadron. I just know the people you want to make friends with in a base are the cooks, janitors, maintenance, and secretaries."

"Well, you've certainly proven the wisdom of your words," she says taking a bite, and closing her eyes about it, "This is delicious."

He watches her eat, a little too impressed by the nearly orgasmic face she's making.

"Sir, if you don't start eating I'm going to have to assume you're a vampire," she says.

"Well, since I don't see any mirrors to prove you wrong," he says, taking a bite. "Why did you join the Air Force?"

"My dad's a General," she says, as if that was all the explanation that was required.

"Oh, I didn't know I was getting involved with a General's daughter. That sounds like it could be pretty dangerous."

"Well, don't flee for your life before you're done with your steak," she advices, "He's in D.C., and it's not likely he could hurt you from there."

"Good to know," he says playfully.

-0-0-0-

When they finished eating, Jack walks over and starts a tape player. "Would you like to dance?"

Sam can't believe it. She tried for the whole four months that she was with Jonas Hanson to get him to take her dancing. With Jack, she didn't even have to ask.

She gives her hand to his, and is immediately held tightly and comfortably in his arms as he skillfully leads her around the dance floor. His scent engulfs her. It's different than she expected. When she gets crammed into close quarters men they smelled like military issued soap and the outdoors, if you were lucky. Most of the time, it just smelled like BO.

But Jack, he smelled like Jack, and it twisted her stomach.

And for the first time, since she was a child, she can feel herself completely relax. She's in a war zone, but she's never felt so peaceful.

He feels her muscles loosen under his hands. He wonders how long she's been tense for. He's also surprised, surprised by how good it feels to have someone rely on him, not in the impersonal way his men do in the field, but in this personal ways that this sweet smelling woman does in his arms.

She rests her head on his shoulder without even noticing that she is doing it. He just barely resists the temptation to nibble on her newly exposed neck.


	3. Part 1 Chapter 3

**Three Days Later**

Jack was cleared for active duty which decreased the amount of time that they had to spend together. They spent every waking moment when they weren't working together. But Sam still found herself wishing that he wasn't allowed to work or that they would both bellowed to work the same times. That way they would have more time to spend with each other.

And now she's going to have to tell him that they are going to lose even more time. "I've got to call my brother. I do it once a week, and if I don't he is going to worry."

"Ok," he says. She take a few steps away, and is surprised to find him following her like a puppy dog.

"Jack," she says.

"I can walk you to the phone shack can't I?"

"Yeah," she says, leaning forward and giving him a brief kiss. The romance is still so new that it sends electricity through both bodies, and leaves them a little breathless, even though the kiss itself was pretty chase.

"O'Neill!" a voice calls.

"Hey, Charlie!" Jack replies smiling at the young Captain running toward him.

"Where have you been? I haven't seen you in days, and you missed a couple of poker games."

"I think I can be blamed for that," Sam says.

Charlie whistles at her, "Well, you do look like a pretty good excuse for blowing off his friends."

Jack puts a protective arm around her, because he doesn't like the way his best friend was looking at her.

She shakes his arm off, quite aware of what he's doing, "He's a pretty good reason for blowing off my friends too. Family, though, that's a different story. I'm going to go call my brother, you think you can keep Jack entertained?" she says.

"See you soon," Jack says slowly, releasing her hand from his only when it was arm's length away. Jack watches her walk away with a smile on his face.

"Wow, you've got it bad," Charlie whispers under his breath.

-0-0-0-

"Sam, you ok? I heard about a plane going down in your unit," Mark says.

"I'm fine Mark, I was actually involved in the rescue of people who went down in that plane."

"Yeah?"

"I actually wanted to talk to you about one of those men. We, ah… started dating."

Silence. She's not really surprised. Mark has never been a big fan of any of the people that she's dated.

"Is he enlisted?" Mark asks.

"No, Mark, I'm not risking my career here."

"Ok, well… it's just that most of the people in the Air Force are enlisted."

"He's a Lieutenant Colonel, in a different squadron."

"Holy crap, how old is he?" Mark asks.

"Mark, are you done being overprotective brother, yet?" she says with a laugh in her voice.

"I just… that Jonas guy was bad news, I told you that it was bad news."

"Jack is no Jonas," she assures him.

"Ok, well, tell me about this 'Jack'," Mark says.

"He's charming, but not like Jonas was. I guess what I find most charming about his… bashfulness. He's smart, but he pretends not to be. He's kind, but he doesn't like to get caught at it…"

"So what I'm getting is that he's a giant liar," Mark says, laughing.

"True, but in a good way."

"When are you coming home, Sammy?" Mark asks softly.

"I don't know yet," she says.

Mark is tired of waiting for people he loves to come back from war. He feels like he waited most of his childhood for his father to get back from war, and now he feels like he's spending all of his adulthood waiting for his sister to come back from war. "You're going to crash at my place when you come back right?"

"Yeah, if I'm still stationed there, I am."

"I miss you, Sam."

"You, too, Mark. How is the fiancée?" she prompts.

-0-0-0-

Sam runs back to where Jack, and Charlie were talking.

"So what did big brother say?" Jack asks.

"Well, he's actually my little brother, even though he acts like my big brother. Actually, sir, he implied that you are too old for me," she teases.

"He's right, of course," Charlie says.

"Don't you be giving her ideas, Charlie," Jack teases.

"Carter, how old are you? I bet we're closer in age," Charlie teases.

"Ah, but you're failing to take into account that women live much longer than men," Sam replies.

"She only likes me for my birth date," Jack teases, pointing to Sam with his thumb.

"It's actually the death date she's interested in," Charlie points out. "Look, I can already see you too have quickly become a package deal. And if I ever want to see my buddy again, I'm going to have to make friends with Carter here. Not that it's looking like a hard job. You mind if I go third wheel for some drinks?" He is looking at Sam.

"Sounds like fun," Sam says, grabbing onto Jack's hand. She knows that he's feeling a little bit insecure right now.

-0-0-0-

The trio is becoming more and more aware that they are causing a little bit of a raucous at the bar. More than once, a fit of hysterical laughter ends with the room staring at them.

"I think we should take this back to our tent, Jack," Kowalski says.

"Ah… those scalliwags that we room with go to bed early," Jack says. Sam raises her eyebrows at the use of the word 'scalliwags'.

"You know, I don't have any roommates," Sam says.

"Interesting," Charlie says, wagging his eyebrows at Jack.

"Shut up," Jack says with more than playful force to his voice. Sam likes the fact that he is defending her honor.

-0-0-0-

"Charlie's out," Jack says, prodding the man with his foot.

"He loses the drinking contest," Sam says, although they never actually started a drinking contest.

"I think we all lost the drinking contest," Jack says. "Charlie! Get up!" Jack says, kicking the sleeping man again. Charlie sits up, a bit, but then falls back down.

"Damn, I'm going to have to carry him back to quarters," Jack murmurs sitting up.

She puts a hand on his, "Stay."

"Stay?" he says with raised eyebrows.

She nods.

"We have company, Angel."

"I didn't mean it like that. I just mean that both of you can sleep off the booze."

"Sounds good," he says laying back.

She re-adjusts herself, even closer to him, completely ensconced in his arms. Safer than she's been since her mother died. If she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine that she lives in a world were nothing bad can ever happen.

"The name's Samantha," she whispers without warning. "Samantha Carter."

He doesn't say anything, so she pulls back so she can look at his face. He's asleep.

"Jack?" she asks, hoping the sleep is light enough that her voice alone can rouse him. It doesn't work. "Goodnight, Jack," she says right as she kisses his forehead.


	4. Part 1 Chapter 4

**Two Weeks Later**

Sam's hand reaches for Jack's during a dinner in the officer mess. It touches the pinky first. Three of her fingers skitter playfully over the pinky before advancing to new territory. He pulls away slowly, and the loss of contact makes her hover awkwardly a millimeter above his thigh where his hand was resting. He slides beneath that distance, and brings her hand higher, until it touches the metal of the table, then he pulls away and traces his finger along the lines of her hand.

His mother used to be an amateur fortune teller. She'd taught him to read palms when he was a small boy. Sam's lifeline is long and segmented. Her love line is short but deep.

She twists his hand quickly stopping the tickling teasing by grasping the hand firmly in hers. The fingers intertwine, and the palms touch one another.

She turns to him and gives him a quick smile although they are both pretending to listen to a man in Sam's platoon describe some football game that happened when he was in high school.

Jack reaches his free hand over his clasped arm to silently offer her his jello.

She shakes his head. He's always giving her stuff. He has to knock it off.

He grins, and stabs a hunk of mystery meat… or flux meat, more accurately, off her plate. She seems to accept the trade by the way she starts to eat the jello with her left hand while squeezing his with her right.

"And then aliens landed in the field and declared me king of Planet-X," the Airman finishes.

Sam nods her head politely, and Jack briefly wonders if he is making an appropriate 'good for you' face.

"Are you guys even listening?" the Airman says, exasperated.

"Naw, they can't hear anything over the music and the bird's chirping in their ears," Charlie says, sitting down next to them.

"What?" Sam asks in confusion.

Jack drops her hand, "I heard everything, you're a football star."

"That just proves you heard the first sentence," the Airman says with an eye role.

"Hey, look at her, you can't blame the man for having trouble focusing," Charlie says with a grin.

Sam's cheeks blush red, and she takes her last bite of the jello.

"Ready to go? I'll walk you to your tent," Jack says.

"Right, that's all you're be doing," the Airman says quietly.

Jack leans forward. "I **am** just walking her home, and if you tell anyone otherwise…" he lets he threat hang in the air, all the more terrifying for being unfinished, and then he stands up to walk her out.

When they hit the cool desert air, she grabs his hand again. She lets it swing between them for a couple beats before she says, "You know, you don't _have _to just walk me to my tent."

She and Jack have been dating for several weeks, and he hasn't made any move besides kissing and holding hands. She's beginning to get insulted.

"Where were you stationed, back home?" he asks looking up at the stars.

She doesn't know why he is changing the topic, "Vandenberg Air Force Base."

"California," he says flatly.

Sam nods.

"See, I'm at Hurlburt Field, myself," he says.

"You're special ops?"

"California and Florida are a long way apart."

"I thought you were a pilot."

"That, too," he mutters.

"Ok, so what's with the geography lesson?" she asks.

He stops cold, "Sam, is this some wartime romance?"

"We don't know where we're going to be when we get back, Jack. We could be stationed near each other."

"Angel, do we have a future?" he asks abruptly.

"I don't know, that depends on whether you learn my name," she teases.

"No, it depends on whether one of us is willing to give up our careers, or if we're both willing to do a long range romance," he says fiercely.

"I'm willing to do long distance," she says, putting an arm on his forearm.

"Ok, then," he says, resuming walking and looking less sad.

"You're not going to return the sentiment?" she asks, knowing already that Jack is not the kind of person that shares his feelings with other people.

"I'll do you one better. There is one way we could get the Air force to station us together," he says.

At first her mind is blank. She has no idea what he means, and then suddenly, she realizes. Marriage. He's talking about marriage. She takes a sharp intake of breath, and stops.

He turns to her with a nervous grin. He knows he shouldn't have said that. That's the sort of thing a crazy possessive stalker would say.

She grins at him, "I want to be an astronaut."

He stares at her in surprise. He shouldn't be surprised, of course, after all, when you add astrophysics and piloting together, you couldn't come up with anything else besides 'astronaut'.

"I like Texas," he says.

She giggles, pulling him closer to her with his arm.

"I'm not supposed to feel like this, not this early," she whispers.

He grins, "It _is_ a crazy out-of-control wonderful feeling, isn't it?"

She nods. They have reached her tent.

He gives her a kiss, which makes all the excitement that has been flowing through her body form a tight coil in her stomach.

"'Night," he says.

"Where do you think you're going?" she asks playfully, tugging at his fatigues at his chest.

He hadn't planned to go into her tent. He really hadn't.

He takes a gentle step toward her, putting one of his legs between hers. It's not even touching her, except a little on one of her knees, but it feels incredibly sensual all the same. He stares into her eyes for a long time.

Long enough that she gets nervous and looks away with a giggle. "You're a national treasure, you know that?" he asks with a throaty voice.

"And you're my supernova," she whispers.

"Then analyze me already."

She wraps her arms around him, and starts to kiss him.

He sweeps her off her feet… literally. He takes a step back, and bends a bit so he can puts a hand under her knee to pull her into a fireman carry.

She screams. Then he tickles her under her knee, and then he giggles. He presses his lips against hers. "You're sure you want to do this, Angel?"

She nods her head wrapping her arms around her neck. He carries her into the tent.

-0-0-0-

Sam shakes her head, trying to get rid of the fly in her hair. The fly only goes deeper into her hair, though, and she opens her eyes in order to figure out what is happening. It's not a fly, it's Jack, and he's running his hand through her hair. No-one has ever touched her with such reverence.

"Hi," she whispers.

"'Morning," he says with a grin.

The memory of last night makes her grin. It was never like that when she was with Jonas. This was just… wow.

"I've only got a half hour," he whispers.

"I wish we could stay in bed all day," Sam mutters.

"Tell you what, the first time we have leave at the same time stateside, we'll do exactly that."

Sam giggles.

Jack runs his fingers through her hair slowly.

"But we can come back here, right when we're done working. There will be the real world, and then there will be the world that the two of us only have when we're off duty."

"I like that plan, all apart from one thing," Jack says.

"What's that?"

"This is the real world, us, that's it."

-0-0-0-

Jack's been gone for two days. Sam knows that she shouldn't worry about this sort of thing. It happens. It especially happens when someone is in black ops. She lived through it once, and she can't believe that she got involved in another guy in black ops.

Sam is sitting outside looking at the stars, trying to think of a way to break up with him.

Suddenly he's next to her. She didn't hear him coming, and she jumps in surprise. She knows that she shouldn't be surprised though. Black ops.

"You ok?" she asks.

He takes her hand, and doesn't say a word. She turns toward him, looking at him. His face has a dismal look. Her dad had it twice, and she never knew why. Jonas had it all the time.

"I'm sorry," she mutters. She knows she should leave him alone. That he's going to get angry and snide, they always did.

"You know, I'm selfish. It's not even that I wish it wasn't done. It needed to be done. I just wish I wasn't the one who had to do it."

She squeezes his hand, understanding that he can't tell her what the 'it' is.

"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you before I left," he whispers, leaning his head toward her shoulder.

She takes him into her arms. He's black ops, that's true. But without even a hint of revealing classified information, he shared more with her than Jonas had in the whole five months they'd dated.

"You're cold, Jack, let's go into my tent, and get some blankets on you," she whispers.

"You're all the warmth I need, Angel."

And Sam once again marvels at the way this man can melt her heart with tired old lines.


	5. Part 1 Chapter 5

**February 1991**

"I got orders," she says, handing them to him.

"You're going back to California," he says softly after reading them.

She nods her head, "You don't have orders yet?"

He shakes his head.

"So, three days then," she whispers.

"I've never seen anyone so sad to be leaving a war zone before," he says.

She doesn't say a word, she just falls into his arms, crying.

"Angel, listen to me. This war is over. They've been shipping people out quickly. Pretty soon, they're going to ship me out. And then, when we're stateside we're going to call each other, and fly out to see each other. And then, before too long, we're going to get married, and they're going to station us at the same base, and we're going to have two children and a dog, and a white picket fence, and what was it, a yellow kitchen, right?"

She pulls away, her forehead wrinkled. Suddenly, he worries that his speech was too fast for her. They've only been dating for three months. Granted, it was a fast three months. He's been sleeping in her tent almost every night since the first time. Apart from the last few days, when she had a flu.

"Not a dog," she says.

"No?" he asks, bemused.

"I'm a cat person."

"Huh, and I thought it was love," he says.

She smacks him playfully.

"Maybe we'll get both," he offers.

"Yes, and they can match," she says cheerfully.

"What do you mean by 'match'?" he asks.

"You know, they're the same color. Like a calico cat with an orange colored dog. Or a black lab, and a black cat."

"Yep, matching pets," he offers with a smile.

"You just make sure to keep safe," she says.

"Yes, ma'am," he says following her into her tent.

"I don't think that's a good idea. I'm still sick," she protests.

"We've got three days left, Angel. I don't really care what I catch, I am going to spend every second of that time with you that I can.

**Three Days Later**

"My name is…" Sam begins, but Jack cuts her off by clasping a hand over her mouth.

"Jack! It was cute at first, but we're in love with one another. We're serious, it's time that you grow up and let me tell you what my name is."

"I will. The first time we see each other state side, I want you to hold up a sign that proclaims your name to me. I just don't want you to tell me right now."

"How are you going to find me?" she protest.

"Phone number. Give me your phone number, and you can have mine. You know my name, in case something goes wrong and you need to look me up," he says.

She takes a paper off her desk, and rips it in half. She hands him a pen, and the two of them write the numbers on the paper before they exchange it.

Sam glances at her watch, "Two more hours."

"I don't like the idea of you flying, you're still sick," Jack protests.

"It's just the flu, Jack."

"You threw up just this morning, and it has been kind of a long flu," he says, doing some math in his head – six days she's been sick, "Are you sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine."

"But maybe you should go to the doctor just in case," he prompts.

"I'll go to one as soon as I'm stateside, but I'm sure it's nothing. I'm going to miss you, Jack," she says hugging him tight.

**One Week Later**

Sam can't believe what the doctor is telling her. "Pregnant, are you sure?"

"Quite sure, ma'am, you're at about five weeks right now. I'm going to have to alert your commanding officer, and put you on restricted duty," the doctor says.

"Of course, I just don't know how this happened. I was on the pill," Sam says.

The doctor looks at her chart. "You were on antibiotics about a month ago, correct?"

"Yeah, I got a little shrapnel from a distant explosion. No big deal, until it got infected."

"Antibiotics counteract the effect of fertility medicine," the doctor says.

Sam nods her head, and stands up from the table trying not to look too stunned.

When Sam was a little kid her mother used to comfort people whose husbands were deployed in a war zone. She remembers that the ones who used to take it the hardest were the ones that were pregnant.

She puts a hand on her stomach, and suddenly her terror ebbs. This is Jack's baby. She and Jack were in love. The last time she saw him, he was talking about getting married and having two children, and getting matching pets.

This isn't the way that they'd wanted this to happen, it is all occurring in the wrong order, but there is a certain degree of rightness to it as well, and everything is going to be ok as soon as soon as Jack calls. He is still overseas, so she can't call him just yet.

God, she wants to hear his voice. Why hasn't he called her yet? He has her number, and access to phones. Maybe he's on a mission. Or maybe he's hurt, and laying in the infirmary and no one can contact her. It's not like she's his next of kin. If he gets hurt, even killed, there is a chance that no-one would ever tell her.

She closes her eyes. She's worried, worried about nothing. And that's not good for the baby. She has to take care of her baby right now.

-0-0-0-

"Hey!" Jack says enthusiastically on the phone.

But it's not the voice he'd been longing to hear in the three days since he'd left her. It's a male voice, "Ah…hi."

"I'm sorry, I must have the wrong number. I don't suppose Lieutenant Carter is there?"

"She's not in right now, can I take a message?"

Jack's heart clenches. There is a man, a man in Angels' house. Maybe this is the ex, and he doesn't want her back with him. But who else would she find in three days? It was seven in the morning, her time. Who would be in her apartment at seven o'clock unless he slept there?

"Ah, no message," he stammers. He wants to steal her from this man, but he knows that he's not going to. She made this choice, and if she wants to be with someone besides him, that's… predictable, really. It was pretty much par for the course.

"Who are you?" the voice on the other end of the phone asks.

"No one, just some guy she served with," Jack says before he hangs up.

**The Next Day**

"Jack, what the hell, if you don't get up soon you are going to be AWOL," Charlie says as he approaches Jack's cot.

Jack doesn't respond. Charlie walks around and sees that Jack's eyes are wet with tears, and that he's curled up in the fetal position. "What happened man?"

"Carter," Jack moans.

"She just went stateside, call her if you miss her so bad," Charlie says laughing.

"No, she went stateside, and moved in with a guy," Jack says.

"No way, man! I saw the way that she fawned over you! You guys were inseparable, it's only been a couple days since then. No way she moved on that fast."

"I think it was her ex," Jack says.

"No, Jack, there is no way. You must have misunderstood something," Charlie said.

"I can't… live without her," Jack mutters.

"Jack?" Charlie says with concern.

"Find me a dangerous mission. A really dumbass, dangerous mission. Until then… I don't see any reason to get up."

"You wanna die, Jack?" Charlie asks, making eye contact with his friend. Jack doesn't respond. Charlie's stomach drops out from inside him.

-0-0-0-

"Sammy, are you ok in there?" Mark asks as he hears the sound of someone getting sick in the bathroom.

Sam leans against the wall of the bathroom for a second. She knows it's time she tells her brother. "I'll be out in a second, and then I'll explain."

Mark is sitting on the couch looking terrified when she walks into the living room. Sam sits down on the other end of the couch, and folds her legs up under her. "This is something they did to you in the Gulf, isn't it?"

"No, this is definitely not something you can blame the military for. I'm pregnant," she says.

"This is why you got sent back?" Mark asks.

"No, although they would have if I'd known. But I didn't know until I got stateside," she says.

"And Jack, does he know?"

"I haven't had a chance to talk to him since," she whispers.

"What do you mean? He knew you well enough to make a baby with you, but somehow he can't bother to call in you in the week you've been back?" Mark says angrily.

"Sometimes in a war zone you don't always get a chance to make a phone call," she defends someone that she isn't so sure deserves defending.

"You managed to call me every week," Mark points out.

"I know, but I wasn't black ops."

"You're dating another one in black ops?" Mark says.

She nods. "He's going to call."

"Why don't you call him? I'm sure that he would want to know that he is going to be a father as soon as possible."

"I have his number stateside. It isn't working right now, but that's probably just because he isn't stateside," Sam says.

"You know, Sammy, I'm here for you, whatever you need," Mark says softly, giving her a little smile.

"Thanks, but I am probably going to get stationed somewhere else. This baby has me on medical light duty. And with my current job, I don't really have a whole lot of things that I can do on light duty. I'm being reassigned, but I don't know where."

"They can't do that! You need your family right now!" Mark says.

"I'm going to be fine, and I'll still have family. A long distance brother is going to be a big help," she says with a sad smile.

"Are you going to tell Dad?" Mark asks.

"I suppose I am going to have to do that before too long. But… I'm probably going to put that off as long as I can."

"I can understand that," Mark says with sympathy.

-0-0-0-

Charlie holds the number that Jack gave him in his hand. He wants to kill her. That slimy girl that's got his best friend on suicide watch. He dials the number, and indeed a male voice answers the phone.

"Is Samantha Carter there?" Charlie asks, because he did actually learn the girl's name.

"Sorry, she's moved," the male voice says.

"What? Where?" Charlie asks.

"I'm sorry, who is this?"

"I'm just someone that she served with," Charlie says.

"Well, there seems to be a lot of that going around."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I just mean there have been several people calling Sammy, saying they were just people who served with her," Mark says his voice contains a trace of insinuation that he didn't mean to put there.

"Oh," Charlie says, because he can't think of anything else to say. So it had been a show. So there were others. They must have been before Jack, because they sure as heck didn't have time for another one while she was with him.

"Well, Sammy's been stationed elsewhere," Mark proclaims.

"Right, sorry to bother you," Charlie says. Jack was right. Sam wasn't who he thought they were.

Charlie has to make sure that Jack never finds out the truth. He might not survive the truth.

**One Week Later**

"Jack, how are you feeling?" Charlie asks tentatively as he enters the hospital room. He isn't quite sure what you're supposed to say to someone being treated for mental health issues, particularly one that you tattled on.

"What the hell, Charlie?" Jack says with his arms crossed.

"Jack, the way you were talking…" Charlie says softly, beginning to wonder if he wasn't wrong.

"Charlie, you've got to get me out of here… tell them you were wrong."

"Was I?" Charlie asks meeting his friend's eyes.

Jack looks away.

"Jack, there will be a life after Carter."

Jack focuses on him again, and Charlie can see that he doesn't believe it.


	6. End of Part 1

**Two Weeks Later**

"Sammy!" Jacob Carter says as he envelops his daughter into a hug.

"Hey, Dad, thanks for letting me stay with you while I find a place to stay," she says, hugging her father back a little awkwardly.

"You know you could stay with me as long as you are stationed in D.C.," he says with a hopeful smile.

"I'm a little old to be living with my dad, I think," Sam says.

Jacob shakes his head.

"Well, a crying baby might keep you up at night," Sam blurts. It wasn't the way she had planned on telling her father about her pregnancy. Well, to be perfectly honest, she'd never had a plan on how to tell her father about her pregnancy. She had spent a lot of time trying to come up with a plan to tell him, but she had never actually succeeded.

"What?" Jack asks, really hoping that he didn't hear what he thought he heard.

"You knew I am on light duty, didn't you?" Sam says.

"I didn't know it was medical," Jacob says.

"Yeah," Sam says biting her lip.

"This is… you got pregnant during the war, then?" her father says with disapproval.

She nods her head.

"Who is the father?

"He is an officer, in another squadron," Sam says looking down.

"Oh, Sam, I'm so sorry," her father says softly.

For a few seconds she's confused. Then she realizes, "Oh no, he's not dead."

"Then…" her father prompts.

"I've tried to call him. I've called him a lot. And he has my number, but… nothing," she says.

"And then I'm sorry again," her father says, "What is his name?"

"Dad, I don't want you to put a whole bunch of effort into searching for someone who doesn't want to be found."

"Sammy, I am going to need the name of my grandbaby's father," he says firmly.

"Jonathan O'Neill," she says.

She can't understand the change in her father's face as the words enter his brain. "Lieutenant Colonel Jack O'Neil?"

"You know him?" she asks.

"Sammy, I've worked with the man for years, he's old enough to be your father! What are you doing with him?" Jacob says in a voice that is a low roar.

"He's not that much older than me," Sam protests.

"Really, what's the age difference?"

Sam looks at her father in horror, for the first time realizing that she doesn't actually know how old the father of her baby is… exactly.

"Sam, what exactly do you know about this man?"

"Not enough, obviously," Sam says.

"Look, Jack comes up to Washington D.C. once a month on business. He'll be here next week, I can invite him over to the house," Jacob says softly.

"He's back?" she asks. Even after all the things that her father has implied about this man, even now that she knows he's back and hasn't called her, somehow she still thinks that he's going to be excited. She was with him for months. She knew him. And she can imagine him walking into her father's house, and seeing her. He'd throw his arms around her, and everything would be ok.

"He's been back awhile, sweetheart," her father says.

"Yeah, you can invite him over," she says with a slow smile.

"Sammy, you know… it's going to be ok. I'm going to be here for you… and the kid," Jacob says. And he's suddenly the father that she knew when she was a small child. He's the father who used to read her bedtime stories and scare away the monsters under her bed. He's the father who used to sit and hold hands with her mother, whispering in her ear when the family watched TV together. It's a side of her father that she missed since her mother died, and he became General.

"I bet you didn't plan on becoming a grandfather quite yet," Sam says softly, picking up her bag.

He takes it from her. She would usually resist such an obvious show of male chauvinism, but she knows that carrying while pregnant is actually really bad for her back.

"No, I didn't quite plan on it. But both of my kids were surprises as well, and that turned out pretty well."

-0-0-0-

"You're leaving the Air Force?" Charlie says softly.

"They won't clear me for activity duty, and it's time to re-sign. Why would I re-sign to fly a desk stateside? That's where they're heading me, Charlie."

"You could get better Jack, and then you could be put back in activity duty."

"Not likely, you need a clean bill of mental health in order to be given any real work," Jack says bitterly.

Charlie's stomach twists with guilt, "I'm sorry, I ruined your career. I didn't mean to."

"It wasn't you that ruined it. It was me. Moaning over a stupid girl, like an idiot," Jack mutters.

"Jack, I have to ask you… are you still…?" Charlie asks, shifting under the awkwardness of the question.

"No, I don't have any intention to harm myself. She's not worth it," Jack says. Charlie detects a deep sadness in Jack's eyes. He may no longer have thoughts of killing himself, but he is also nowhere close to being over Samantha Carter.

**One Week Later**

"Hey, Sam, come on down stairs!" Jacob calls up the stairs. Sam takes one last look in the mirror before she runs downstairs. She freezes on the stairs. Jack should be here by now. But the man standing there talking to her father is not Jack.

"Ah… hi," she says awkwardly.

Jacob looks between the two people, and can't understand the coldness in their air. It's like they've never met.

"Sam, this is Jack O'Neill," he says.

Sam pauses on the step, "No, it isn't." Is this some sort of joke? Is her dad planning a joke with her concerning the father of her baby? Really?

"I assure you ma'am, I do know my own name," the man replies.

Now Sam can see why her father was so surprised to find out Jack was the father. This man, with no sense of humor and thirty years on her, was definitely not her type. "Ok, well, this was not the Jack O'Neill I'm having a baby with," she says.

"I certainly am not!" the man says taking a step back in horror.

"I'm sorry about my daughter," Jacob says glaring at her on the staircase.

"There must be another Jack O'Neill. It's not like it is the most uncommon name in the world," she says.

"Excuse me," Jacob says to O'Neill, before he leads his daughter in the kitchen. "I was really hoping that I was wrong," he mutters.

"Wrong about what?" Sam asks.

"Sam, he gave you a phone number that didn't work. What makes you think that he didn't give you a fake name?" Jacob asks softly.

"No, dad, it's not like that. You just don't know him. If you knew him, really knew him, you'd never say that. I just need to find him. You can do a search for Jack O'Neills, right?"

"It's a really common name," her father says softly.

"Right, but there can't be that many in the Air Force," she begins.

"I'll look into it, Sammy," he says, trying to calm her down.

-0-0-0-

Jack's cabin had always been his refuge. A safe place that he could go to escape any problems in the world. It was a perfect place to go post-Angel.

That's right, his life is divided into pre- and post-, with a different man on each side of the Gulf.

He fidgets with a ring.

That's right, he was stupid enough to buy the woman a ring. He'd described exactly what he wanted to a friend stateside, and he'd bought it for him. Jack was about to have it shipped to him with a crazy amount of insurance on it, and then he'd found out that she was going back to the states. So he'd told his friend to hold onto it. He figured he could give it to her the first time that they saw each other stateside.

His answering machine had been blank when he came up here. Not that he really expected her to call. How would she have time when she was living with… him? But it still would have been nice. It would have been nice if she'd try to lie to him, and convince him she had really been in love with him. Maybe he even would have pretended to believe her. After all, a little of Angel was better than a whole lot of another girl.

He takes one last look at the shimmering engagement ring before he chucks it into the lake. It's stupid, that ring was worth a lot of money, and that's going to be pretty tight now that he doesn't exactly have a job.

He'll survive. He'd decided that he was going to survive, although he wasn't quite sure why.

**A Few Days Later**

"Sammy," Jacob says, sitting down next to his daughter on the porch. Her new boss is a very 'by the books' guy. The regulations say that pregnant women aren't allowed to work overtime, and since she moved to Washington she hasn't.

"Hey," she says, taking a sip of the herbal tea she's begun drinking in order to kick her caffeine habit.

"So I looked up Jack O'Neill today," her father says softly.

"And?" she asks hopefully, but she knows the answer as soon as she looks at her father's eyes. "Did you try 'Jonathan'? Jack is a nickname for Jonathan."

"I know that, Sam," her father says softly.

"Of course you do. But maybe there is a different spelling or…" she begins.

He puts a hand on her arm, "Sam, I tried everything, there is no one by the name of Jack O'Neill in the Air Force except for that man that you met the other night."

Sam nods her head slowly. "I tried his number three times today… nothing. It's never going to work."

"No, it isn't, sweetie. I'm so sorry. Have you thought about… what are you going to do now?"

"I'm going to raise my baby," she says, putting a protective hand over her stomach, "And someday, when it's old enough, I'll tell it that its father was an asshole."

Jacob chuckles pulling his daughter into a hug.

Sam wonders how she could have been so off. So wrong. She was so sure that she knew the man she'd spend three months with in war zone. She was so sure that she loved him. If she could be wrong about that, then she could be wrong about anything.


	7. Part 2 Chapter 1

**Authors Note: Stargate SG-1 says that the events of the movie and the events of the TV show are one year apart.****Now in reality, the TV show and the movie were three years apart. Most people take care of this difference by going with the dates of the TV show, and then giving the date from the movie as one year before that. I decided to go with the opposite approach, because both make an equal amount of sense. Actually, this way makes a little bit MORE sense, because it's plausible that a TV show made in 1997 could be set in 1995.****However, it would be pretty hard for a movie to be set in 1996 when it was made in 1994.****Unless there is time travel involved, but we are taking about SG-1, so time travel is fair game. Anyway, this timeline worked better for me, because it brought the whole ****S****targate story a bit closer to the Gulf War in which Part 1 occurred. So, in my timeline****,**** Abydos happens in 1994, and season 1 of SG-1 happens in 1995 with all of the seasons following after.**

**Part 2: 1995, Colorado Springs**

The Air Force was a small world after all, Samantha Carter through grimly to herself. Jack O'Neill, her father's friend that she'd humiliated herself in front of years ago by proclaiming that he WASN'T the man who impregnated her in the middle of a desert, was her new boss. It was bad enough that she'd had to read that stupid name on the mission reports all those years.

At least George was in charge of the operation. He was a good man. Another of her father's old friends, actually, the Air Force being small and all. When she'd first found out about her new post, she'd been furious. She was sure that her father was involved. He wasn't, she knew that as soon as she found out the Stargate was involved. If her father actually knew what the Stargate was, there is no way that he'd be pulling for her to work at it. Her father had been none too happy when she'd gone back to being a pilot a year ago. She'd hadn't done any dangerous work since she found out she was going to have a son. She hadn't wasted the years of course, she'd studied nanotechnology at the Pentagon for the first one, and the Stargate for the second one.

But when she was offered a job flying planes again, she'd taken it. She was a pilot, after all.

She was furious about being pulled from behind the cockpit, right up until she found out what her new assignment actually was. She was going to go through the Stargate. That silent piece of metal that she'd studied for a year. It had been declared useless, because Jack O'Neill had lied. They had that in common, those Jack O'Neills.

Then she hears George's voice saying her name.

That name 'Carter' stabs Jack's heart fiercely. Someone with that surname shattered his heart a long time ago. She was the reason he went on that suicide mission through the Stargate last year.

In the hallway Sam hears "I'd prefer to put together my own team, sir". The voice is familiar, really familiar. It makes her heart ache with longing, but she can't remember why.

"Not on this mission, sorry. Carter's our expert on the Stargate," George says. She smiles. She is that.

Jack mentally scolds himself, he shouldn't be blaming some guy just because he happens to have her name. "Where's he transferring form?" he asks, looking up at the General.

Sam in the hallway takes this as her hint. She saunters into the room and says, "She is transferring from the Pentagon." Then she stops cold. It's him. HER Jack O'Neill.

He stares at her in equal horror.

"You really are Jack O'Neill," she says in shock.

"Of course I am," he says looking away from her.

"No, there was only one Jack O'Niell in the Air Force, and he wasn't you," she says.

"Sir, I feel obligated to inform you that there is a personal problem with these two, and she can't be on our team," Charlie says, standing up to defend his team.

"_I _can't be on the team! What about _him_?" Sam protests.

General Hammond stand up, and uses his very best, 'shut up or die' voice, "I don't care what soap opera episode you people are re-enacting right now. I choose who are on the teams, and you are both on the team. Let's get started. Colonel?"

Sam sits down. George hasn't yelled at her since she was six and she and Mark finger painted on his wall. She really needs to start thinking of him as General Hammond. And Jack, the man she shared her heart with for three brief months, she has to start thinking of as Colonel O'Neill, because apparently they gave the jerk a promotion.

"Thank you," Jack says carefully, watching as Sam smoothes the skirt of her class As beneath her as she sits. She's as beautiful as he remember her being. Maybe even more so. Her hair is different; shorter, lighter. She's a touch heavier, but it's all muscle. It would be harder to pin her in their playful wrestling. Then he remembers, that's never going to happen anymore, and the pain is fresh again. "Those of you on your first trip through the 'Gate, you should be prepared for what to expect."

He's exactly the same as he was four years ago. She can remember everything about him, from his scent to the way his fingers traced through her hair. And for a moment she, forgets the other things… the way her heart shattered into a thousand pieces, and the late night feedings she had with her son all alone. She interrupts him, "I've practically memorized your report from the first mission. I'd like to think I've been preparing for this my whole life."

Charlie interrupts in defense of his friend, "I think what the Colonel is saying is, have you ever pulled out of a simulated bombing run in an F-16 at 8-plus G's?"

Sam meets Charlie's eyes, "Yes."

"Well, it's way worse than that," Ferreti says.

O'Neill's voice sounds strange, strained. He doesn't want to get into a contest with her proving how good she is. He knows she's good. But he feels like he does have to prepare her for what is about to come, "By the time you get to the other side, you're frozen stiff, like you've just been through a blizzard, naked."

The scientific part of her brain kicks in to protect the more emotional parts, "That's a result of the compression your molecules undergo during the millisecond required for reconstitution."

"Right, I'd almost forgotten you were a scientist," Jack mutters. It's a lie. He hasn't forgotten a single thing about her.

"Theoretical astrophysicist," Sam says, just because she feels the need to correct anything that Jack says right now.

"She is way smarter than you are, Colonel. Especially in matters related to the Stargate," General Hammond interrupts. Charlie and another man that Sam doesn't know start to giggle. A glare from Jack causes them to stop.

"Colonel, I was studying the 'Gate technology for two years before Daniel Jackson made it work and before you both went through. I should have gone through then. But, sir, you and your men might as well accept the fact that I am going through this time."

"Captain Carter's assignment to this unit is not an option, it's an order," General Hammond says in his scary voice.

"Colonel, I saved your ass in the Gulf, after you crashed a plane. Is that tough enough for you? Or are we going to have to arm wrestle?" She knows that her mentioning his "emergency landing" is hurtful, but right now, she wants to hurt him.

And then Samuels interrupts, talking about how they shouldn't even do anything with the Stargate. The personal tension in the room does nothing to dissipate.

As soon as the meeting is over, Sam rushes out of the room. She hates putting her son in day care, but her dad wouldn't be in Colorado Springs until Sunday.

"Carter, wait up," he calls as he runs after her down the hallway.

"Well, you finally learned my name," she snarls.

"I actually always knew that part of it, it was the Samantha that was a surprise."

"I don't really want to talk to you," she informs him flatly.

"Well, I don't really want to talk to you either, but I think we have to get our personal issues sorted out before our lives depend on one another," he says.

"Don't worry, Sir, I'll save you ass in the field again if necessary," she says, pushing the button for the elevator.

And he finds that he doesn't have the strength to follow her into it.

-0-0-0-

Hours later, and he's found the strength. He walks deliberately up the sidewalk, and knocks on the door.

A little boy, barely above the age of a toddler answers. "Hi! Welcome to Colorado!"

"I'm sorry, I must have the wrong house," he says, confused.

And then Sam comes around the corner. "Tyler*, you cannot answer the door unless you know who it is."

"Carter," Jack says stunned.

"You were getting the pizza outa the oven," the child protests, "I'll get it!"

"You're going to burn yourself!" Sam protests, running after him.

Jack follows, pushing the pizza farther out of the boy's reach. Tyler grabs a pizza cutter out of the drawer, and hands it into Jack. Jack deliberately slices the pizza as Tyler pulls a chair across the room in order to pull a plate out of the cupboard.

"How old are you, Ty?" Jack asks.

"You say my name wrong, and I'm three," the kids responds.

"I don't say it wrong. It's a nickname. My name is a nickname too. So is your mother's, actually," Jack informs him as he takes the plate from the boy. Jack skillfully uses the pizza cutter as a spatula. His bachelor life has given him a lot of practice with frozen pizza.

"I went to my first day of daycare today," Tyler announces.

Sam is about to take the plate away from Jack. He probably doesn't know how to feed pizza to her son. But as she reaches for it Jack takes the pizza cutter and divides the pizza into choke-proof bite-sized pieces. "Did you like it?" Jack asks.

"Mommy was nervous, but I made a new friend. Her name is Emma. I wanted to play astronaut, but she said we had to play house. I was 'posed to be the Daddy, but I didn't know how, 'cause I don't have one," Ty says, losing his train of thought in an attempt to grab the pizza.

Jack touches his finger to it. "It's too hot," he cautions.

"I want pizza," the three year olds brain says, short-circuiting at the start of a tantrum.

Jack opens the freezer and puts the plate of cut pizza in it. "Hey, buddy, tell me what happened next with Emma," he prompts by way of distraction.

"She told me how to be a dad. You sit on the couch and tell people not to do stuff," Ty says, reaching up toward the freezer.

Jack flinches at his son's first lesson in fatherhood.

"Not all dads are like that, kiddo. Grandpa is my dad," Sam says softly.

"Really? You can be a Grandpa AND a dad?" Ty asks in fascination.

Jack stifle a laugh. "Being a father is pretty much a requirement for being a grandpa." Jack grabs the pizza out of the freezer and touches it. "Safe for Ty consumption," Jack says, handing it to the boy.

"Sweetie, why don't you go eat that in the living room in front of the TV?" Sam asks.

"'Cause dinner time is family time, it's a rule," Tyler explains.

"That's true, but we'll make an exception," Sam says, smiling.

Tyler runs off. "Stay off the couch, though."

"He's amazing," Jack says, genuinely awed by the child.

"What did you come here for, Jack? Because you certainly didn't come here to cut up Tyler's pizza."

"Well, I might have come just for that, if I knew he existed."

"And whose fault is that?" Sam asks bitterly.

"Probably the person who knew that he existed for the past three years," Jack says with equal venom.

"Oh, I thought it was the bastard who gave me a fake number after practically proposing!" Sam says with the sting of a shout but the volume of a whisper.

"I did not give you a fake number."

"But you did," she says firmly.

"No I didn't."

"Don't you think I tried to call it?" she asks.

"Don't you think I know my own phone number, God, Ty probably knows his own number, or his old one, anyway."

"This number has been disconnected or is no longer in service," she quotes.

"No, that's my cabin number. I lived there… with a working phone up until last week, besides the Abydos mission, and I checked my messages. What number did you dial?"

"555-2374."

"No, 555-2314," Jack corrects.

"I've been reading numbers for years, Jack, it was a 7."

"You have got to be kidding me! My life is destroyed because of my shitty handwriting. Somewhere, my second grade teacher is saying 'I told you so'." He grabs a napkin and writes a number on it, "This is how I write a 1."

"I don't understand. After the war my dad looked for you… the only Jack O'Neill that was in the Air Force wasn't you."

"Yeah, well, I quit the Air Force by then."

"Why?" she asks, confused.

"How sure are you that he's mine?" Jack asks abruptly.

"What?"

"Come on Carter, you have a doctorate, and that wasn't even a complex sentence."

"Well, then Jack, here is you answer. Considering I've only had sex with two people, and one of them was 9 months before my son's birth, and the other was three years, yeah, I'm pretty damn sure he's yours."

He laughs.

"And what about that EXACTLY is funny?" she demands.

"Sam, I talked to him. The guy you were with right after the war. He was in your apartment at eight in the morning."

"Mark," she says, glaring at him.

"Mark," Jack repeats in shock, "Your brother, Mark?" he falls on a chair.

Sam's eyes tear up, "You thought… days after I was with you… you thought I could be with someone else?"

"Oh God, Sam, if I'd talked to him. If I'd left you a message, we would have… been together. Ty would have a dad," Jack says.

"You… left the Air Force because…" she can't quite finish that sentence.

He swallows hard. "It was either not re-enlist or get a medical discharge," Jack mutters.

"For depression?" she guesses.

He just looks at her, his eyes haunting her. She runs her hand across her face, "We destroyed one another."

"And it was all a misunderstanding," He says. He puts his hand over hers, and holds it to his cheek.

"Jack, it's been four years," she whispers.

"Four wasted years," he agrees, looking in her eyes.

She takes a step back. She loved him once, she doesn't know if she can survive another bout of passion like that.

"Right, four long years," he says, standing up, "So how is this going to work? Can I start spending time with him?"

She nods, and starts to sob, "Jack… if only…"

Jack starts moving toward Sam, intending to take him into her arms. As he moves forward, he feels a hard swat in his back, "You're a bad man, you made my Mommy cry."

Jack turns to his son, "You're right, I did. And that was wrong, but it was an accident, and I'm going to try really hard never to do it again."

"And we don't hit, ever," Sam says.

"Hey, buddy, do you like baseball?"

"Yeah," Tyler says, heading for the back door.

"Hey, finish your dinner first," Sam warns, "You leave it on the floor and Schrodinger is going to get it."

"Schrodinger?" Jack asks with a raised eyebrow.

"The cat," Sam says.

"How matchable?" Jack responds with a grin.

"Hey, I don't know what your name is," Ty says to Jack.

Jack opens his mouth to answer with, "Dad," but Sam breaks in with, "Jack."

"Jack?" Jack repeats, looking at her sadly.

"What did you want me to call you, your nickname?" Ty asks.

"Jack _is_ his nickname, he might have wanted you to call him 'Colonel', but it would be too formal for a four year old, don't you think?"

"Yeah, Jack," Jack says slowly.

"You finish up, and then you can do something… not baseball, he doesn't have a ball," Sam explains.

"I've got one in my car," Jack explains.

Tyler retreats back into the living room. "So, you don't want him to know I'm his dad?" Jack asks softly.

"Not forever, just… I get that it's not your fault. That you didn't leave. But I don't really know you, Jack. We had three months, three crazy months, together in a war zone. I'm not going to give my son a father to just see him lose him."

"So I've got to earn the title of 'Dad'? I can live with that," Jack says.

"I've missed you," Sam says, looking at him.

"I missed you, too, and I'm so sorry you've had to do this alone. I swear to you, Carter, if I'd known…."

"Let's just look forward, Jack," she mutters.

"Mommy! Schrodinger sat on my pizza!" Ty complains from the other room.

"You should have got a dog, Carter," Jack declares with a bemused grin.

***In honor of Jack's son in the movie.**


	8. Part 2 Chapter 2

**The Next Day**

"Sir, I need to talk to you about Captain Carter," Jack says as he enters General Hammond's office early the next morning.

"Colonel," General Hammond says using the voice that makes his stomach shake, "I don't care what is going on between the two of you, but you are going to have to get this solved before you go through the gate."

"General, I think you are misunderstanding. I'm not here because Carter and I can't get along. I'm here because we got along a bit too well."

"Excuse me?" the General booms. For a second he looks a little bit like an overprotective father, and Jack remembers with a pang of fear that Carter's dad really is a General in the Air Force. One who is no doubt just as intimidating as the General who is currently in front of them, and probably thinks he's a deadbeat dad.

"Sir, I knew Sam back in the Gulf. You are aware that Carter has a son?" he asks, looking at the General.

The Generals eyes go large, "You're telling me you're Tyler's dad?"

Jack nods.

The General stands up to his full height, which isn't actually that tall, but which is still capable of intimidating. "You're the lowlife that abandoned a Sam when she was pregnant in a war zone? You've got to have twenty years on her, for God's sake."

"That's not… how it happened. I tried to get into contact with her after the war, and I never knew she was pregnant." Suddenly, a memory that seemed unimportant at the time comes back to him, "I should have known though, she was sick right before she got orders. We thought it was the flu, but now I know it was morning sickness."

"So you're alerting me that Sammy and you are planning on breaking frat rules?" the General says.

"Yeah, I suppose having a kid together is breaking the frat rules just a bit, Sir. That certainly qualifies as a relationship that might prejudge good order and discipline. But that's not why I want a transfer out of being her commanding officer. The reason I was asking was a bit more practical, child care."

The General looks at him critically. "Child care? Sam doesn't let anyone watch that kid when she's not around. Well, at least not anyone but Jacob."

"Jacob?" Jack says, his stomach twisting in the fear that Sam might have been lying. Maybe there really have been others.

"Her father," the General says glaring at him.

"I was with Ty for hours last night," Jack protests.

"Right, but she didn't actually let you get out of her sight with him, did she?" the General presses.

"I hadn't noticed," Jack says slowly, bothered by this new information.

"Right, well don't feel bad, it's everyone."

"Ty said he went to day care," Jack says stunned.

"Wow, Sammy must really want to get through the gate," the Generals says in awe. "Look, I'm going to tell you that making a decision about child care without actually talking to the mother of your kid is pretty dumb. I'm denying your request, because you are the only person who has led a team through the Stargate, you're too important."

"I'm not that important, and you said that Carter is an expert on the Stargate. Why not give her the command?" he asks.

"Because she's a Captain, and doesn't have the experience. She's been in charge of a dozen guys in her aircraft in the Gulf. She's kept ten scientists and as many civilians in line for a couple of years. She's never done ground operations, Jack. She's never been responsible for a dying man, never held him in her hands."

"No, she hasn't held dying men, because she was damn good at preventing them from dying. I can attest to that. And I can also attest that she sits by people when they are in the hospital, makes sure they are all right. That goes a long way in my book," he says.

"She's not ready."

"What about Charlie, then?" he asks softly.

"Jack, I'll keep this in mind. If I ever get a chance to give you both jobs that make sense for you, I will."

"Thank you, Sir," he says standing up.

He's almost to the door when the General's voice calls him back, "Congratulations, Daddy."

"Thanks, sir," he says with a smile.

-0-0-0-

Sam wakes up with a start, sitting straight up in her bed with pure panic. She runs into her son's room, and draws an arm out of the blanket. She feels it carefully. It's fine, whole.

She scoots her baby over in bed, and wraps her arms around him. "I'm sorry baby boy. I'm so sorry," she says, gently kissing his forehead.

-0-0-0-

"Mommy, did you sleep in my bed again last night?" Tyler asks as he runs a hand over her face to wake her up.

"Yeah, baby, you had a nightmare again," she tells him.

Tyler is only three years old, but he's already figured out that he's not the one with nightmares. "I'm fine, mommy," he tells her, wrapping his chubby baby arms around her.

"I know you are, honey. You are fine."

-0-0-0-

"Mom," Jack says on the phone.

"Hey, babe, I heard you got called onto active duty again. Where are you stationed?"

"I'm in Colorado," he says, trying to interrupt his mother with the real purpose of the call.

"What are you doing?" his mother asks.

"I can't tell you that mom, but listen there is something I can tell you… ah… you can stop bugging me for grandkids."

There is a moment of silence, but when it ends it really ends, "You're telling me that you got some girl pregnant? Who is she? How come you've never talked about her? How serious is it? Are you getting married? When is she due?"

"Ah… about three years ago," he says, only managing to answer the last question.

"You've had a kid for three years, and you couldn't be bothered to tell your mother. Do you even understand how much you've made me miss?"

"Mom, I didn't know until yesterday. I met her back in the Gulf, mom. I never knew she was pregnant, and I ran into her again. And I met him. His name is Tyler Carter. He's a really great kid. He's got his mother's blond hair and my eyes. Your sense of humor, and the O'Neill sense of justice. Carter was crying when we were talking in the living room, and he tried to beat me up for making my mom cry."

"You call this girl by her last name? Why did you break-up?"

"Ah… right now I'm her boss, and we never really broke up."

"Yet you haven't seen her in four years," his mother says.

"Yeah, there was a misunderstanding, we couldn't find each other after the war."

"My god, Jack, is she the one that destroyed you?" his mother asks in a soft voice.

"No-one destroyed me," Jack says annoyed.

"Don't give me that. I saw you after the Gulf War. And at first, that's what I thought it was… the war. Post-traumatic stress or something. I was surprised that it hadn't happened before. All the wars you went through. But none of the wars, none of them destroyed you like her. And I knew… it was some her," his perceptive mother says.

"Yeah, it was her," Jack admits.

"So how open is she to your involvement? Can I meet him?"

"I don't know mom, this is pretty new. I… really only spent one day with the kid. She wants him to call me 'Jack' for now. But I'll ask for you."

"God, Jack, you're a father," she whispers.

"I am," he says, and he can't help a grin that's spreading across his face.

**One Day Later**

"Hey, Carter?" he says with a grin when she opens the door. "Is it ok if I come again? I know I was just here yesterday, but…"

"Jack!" Ty says, wrapping himself around his legs.

"Hey, little man," Jack says picking him up.

"Grandpa's coming tomorrow. Mommy is going on a trip the day after that. I wanta come with, like when we went from home to new home. But Mommy says I'm going to start going on trips that she can't go on."

"Your mother's right," he says.

"Nuf' air," he mutters. Jack knows he's trying to say no fair, but it comes out all run together. And with the way he's quickly moving toward tantrum something that sounds like 'enough air,' is actually pretty fitting.

"The cool thing about her new job is that your mother is going to have whole days off, and she can spend them with you, doing all kinds of fun things," Jack says.

"You too, Jack?" the kid asks hopefully. He loves the way that little kids get attached so fast.

"I'm not really sure, maybe different things at different times," Jack says.

"Of course you are. You're on the same team as me," Sam protests.

"Ah… I talked to the General about finding a job were our days on and off would be closer to opposite. He said no for now," Jack says, looking in her eyes.

She's pissed, and the General is right, he never should have done this without asking her first. "Why don't you want to work with me?" she demands.

"Maybe, we should finish this… somewhere else," he says, glancing at the kid in his arms.

Sam nods her head, and Jack puts her down. Sam pulls a coloring book and some crayons off a high shelf, and hands them to her son. "Jack and I are going to go into the kitchen. You come in if you need anything, bud, ok?"

The kids nods, "But don't make Mommy cry again," he says, giving Jack a glare.

"I'll try not to," Jack promises. He puts his hand on the small of her back as the two of them walk into the kitchen. She flinches under the contact, and he pulls his hand away quickly.

"I want to work with you, but I'm not sure it's appropriate…" Jack begins.

"So you just assumed that we were going to be together without even asking me?" she asks with venom.

"I didn't know if we were going to be involved. But we have a kid together, and that's a strong bond. It doesn't have to be a romantic relationship in order to be breaking the frat rules. And I was thinking that I could take care of him when you were going through the Stargate. I know that having someone you trust to watch him is really important to you."

"And what makes you think that I could trust you?" she says bitterly.

"I don't know, maybe the fact that I'm his father!" Jack blurts.

"What?" a tiny voice says.

Both adults turn to the little boy who is looking at them with a mouth hanging open.

"Did you need something, babe?" Sam asks, choosing to ignore the question that he just blurted out.

"Is Jack my Daddy?" Tyler asks not willing to be that easily distracted.

Sam's stomach twists, "Yeah honey, he is." She really didn't want her kid to know. She knows she should trust Jack. She believes that it wasn't his fault. But she still can't trust him, not completely.

"Why didn't you love me?" Tyler says, looking up at his father.

"Oh God, son, I love you," Jack says picking him up.

"No, you left," he says.

Sam breaks in, "Honey, I told you that your Daddy never knew about you."

"And if I would have I would have been there for you," Jack says.

"But you weren't. Didn't you love Mommy?" the kid asks, looking at his father in confusion.

"I loved your mother very much," Jack tells him, holding the child chose. Tyler has gone a little limp in his arms. He's a dead weight snuggled into the crook of Jack's neck.

"I don't understand what happened," Ty informs them.

"Neither do I," Sam says.

"It was all because I don't have good handwriting," Jack proclaims.

The little baby pulls his head away, and looks at his father. "What?" he asks.

"That's right, my handwriting was bad, and that's why we couldn't be together anymore," Jack informs his son.

"Oh, ok," the little boy says. Sam stares at him open mouthed. That made sense to Tyler? It didn't even make sense to her, and she was an adult who had actually lived through it.

"How is your handwriting now?" he asks, pulling back to look at Jack's face. He's trying to figure out if his father is going to leave again.

"I'm working on it," Jack says. He's looking over his son's head, and there is a message in this for Sam, and he is not talking about his handwriting.

"I'll help you practice," Ty proclaims. "I can write a 'T'."

"'T' for Tyler," Jack says, sitting down so his son can skip off.

"How did you know that?" Tyler asks.

"Well, my spelling's better than my handwriting, son," Jack replies.

And Sam giggles. She giggles in a way that she hasn't since the last time she knew Jack. And then she stands there as Tyler 'teaches' his father to write. She smiles at her boys. This is right. This is the way it should have been.


	9. Part 2 Chapter 3

**Three Days Later**

"Can we go to the toy store, Grandpa?" Tyler asks, looking up hopefully at his grandfather.

"We came here to get some things for the new house," Jacob reminds him.

"Things like toys?" the boy asks.

Jacob laughs, and turns into the toys store. Suddenly, his grandson starts sprinting away from him. "Tyler!" Jacob shouts in panic, as he runs after his son.

Tyler flings himself into a tall man's arms, shouting, "Daddy!"

The man picks him up with delight in his eyes, but says, "Where is your mother?"

Jacob stops his sprint, and looks at the man, utterly confused. Did that kid seriously just say 'Daddy'? What is going on here?

"At home," the boy says.

"How did you get here?" the man asks, now seeming a little bit worried.

"Grandpa," Tyler says, pointing to him.

The man with his grandson on his hip looks over at Jacob. "Hi. Jack O'Neill."

"Yeah right," Jacob says, looking daggers at him

"Grandpa, this is my daddy! He only left because he has bad handwriting," Tyler announces.

"What?" Jacob says, staring at the boy in confusion.

"Look, I'm willing to give you a more full explanation sometime when little ears aren't around," Jack says.

"Can I have my grandson back?" Jacob asks, with his mouth in a firm line.

Jack nods his head, and takes a step forward to hand the kid over to Jacob. Tyler wraps his arms around Jack's neck, "No, Daddy, you can't leave," he whines.

Well, Jacob can't very well take the kid away from him now. "Ok, little man, how about… Jack hangs out with us until we're done in the toy store."

"And then I'll see you after Mommy and I come back from our… trip," Jack reminds him.

"'Kay," Tyler agrees. Then he turns to his grandfather, "And you can't call him Jack anymore. He changed his name to Daddy."

Jacob can't help but smile.

"Daddy, toy stores are for kids. What are you doing here?" Tyler asks.

"Well, I might have been here looking for something a little boy might enjoy," Jack says with a grin.

Tyler bounces in his arms, "Am I the boy? Am I the boy?"

Jack laughs, "You are."

Tyler's eyes grow round, "What are you going to get me?"

"Tyler," his grandfather scolds.

"I was thinking of a catcher's mitt," Jack says.

"My size?" the boy asks hopefully.

"Exactly," Jack says.

"Grandpa, Daddy tried to teach me to play baseball. But I couldn't catch it, and I cried. He told me the glove was too big, and we went in and made puzzles. I'm good at puzzles." Suddenly another thought occurs to the little boy, "Daddy, what if I still not good at baseball?"

"Then I'll come back here and buy you some new puzzles," Jack replies.

Damn, Jack is getting harder to hate, Jacob thinks to himself. This man may have been an ass to his daughter, but he seemed to get pretty good at the fatherhood thing.

-0-0-0-

The closer Charlie gets to his Grandpa's car, the tighter his grip on his father's neck. Ever since he found a glove that fit, he's refused to take it off his hand, and it keeps knocking Jack in the head.

"Buddy, it's time for you to go home now," Jack whispers in the boy's ear.

"Daddy's coming too," the boy says firmly.

"Honey, your grandpa just got here, you want some time with him," Jack says.

"Grandpa isn't leaving," Tyler says sadly.

Jack pulls the boy away far enough that he can look him in the eye, "I'm not leaving, either, Ty."

Jacob clears his throat to keep tears out of his eyes. "Jack, why don't you meet us at the house?"

"You're sure?" Jack asks carefully.

Jacob nods. He can't believe he is actually inviting the man who broke his daughter's heart over. But this boy, he needs his father right now. He knows he would be causing trauma to the kid to make his father leave him.

"I want to ride with Daddy," Tyler says, wrapping his arms tighter around his father's neck.

Jacob starts to protest, but Jack already has it covered, "I'm sorry, bud, that isn't going to happen. I don't have a car seat yet. But you be good for your Grandpa, and I'll see you in a couple of minutes," Jack leans forward so there are only a couple of inches between him and a man that he's barely met.

"Ok," Tyler says, turning and leaping into his grandfather's arms.

-0-0-0-

Sam and her father are sitting next to each other on the deck as Jack and his son play catch in the front yard. The correctly-sized mitt helped, but the kid is still a little bit clumsy. The kid is nervous about making mistakes, but every time he drops the ball Jack tells a joke or makes a mistake on his own to make the kid more comfortable.

"He's spending a lot of time with Tyler, isn't he," Jacob asks.

"Well, he has a lot of time to make up for," Sam says.

"He does," Jacob says bitterly.

Sam looks at her father, "That wasn't his fault."

"I don't know what kind of crap he fed you, but I was there when you were pregnant and terrified. There is no excuse for what he did to you, Sammy."

"He never gave me a fake number. He just writes his stupid ones like sevens," she whispers.

"No, Sammy, I looked for him, if there was a Jack O'Neill in the Air Force I would have found him," he says firmly.

"He wasn't in the Air Force after the war," she whispers.

"Didn't he have your number?" Jacob demands, annoyed by the previous sentence.

"He called it, and when Mark answered early in the morning, he assumed…" Sam says.

"Oh," Jacob says, nodding. This man should have known his daughter better than that. Not that Sammy didn't have the chance to be with lots of men, but she didn't take very many up on the opportunity.

"He got depressed, suicidal, that's why he left the Air Force," Sam whispers.

"So… what is he doing now?" Jacob asks softly. He can't help but wonder if his grandson has an unemployed man for a father.

"He's back in the Air Force, we're on the same team. Jack is trying to get to move things around at work, he wants to be here for him when I'm traveling," Sam says softly.

"You letting him watch Tyler alone?" Jacob says in surprise.

"I'm going to have to, dad," she says.

"No, Sam, you don't have to," her father says softly.

"He could take Tyler from me," she whispers.

"No way in hell is anyone taking that boy from you. You're his mother. What the hell did he say? Did he threaten you?" Jacob demands, barely able to keep his voice below a bellow.

"No, Jack hasn't said anything about it. But he could, dad. Anytime he wants to. I've got to… keep him happy," Sam says quietly.

"Sammy, what happened is not your fault. You were cleared," her father says softly, looking at the kid.

"Don't tell Jack what happened to Tyler, please," she says, turning to him, pleading.

"Of course not," Jacob says, his stomach twisting. So, Tyler's dad is back in the picture, and Sam is worried that it is all going to go to hell. Perfect.

**Two Days Later**

Jack is a good commander. You can tell that, because he notices right away that Sam isn't going through the gate with the rest of the team. He hangs back with her.

"Captain?" he asks. It feels weird for him to be referring to her with rank. He still calls her by her last name when he's at her house. But that's a lot more personal than a rank.

"Oh, don't worry, Colonel. I won't let you down," Sam promises, offering a smile. She really needs him to think that she's good at her job. Maybe if he thinks that, he'll also believe she's a good mother. God, why had she fed the kid pizza on the first day they came over? She always fed her kid good food. But it was the day of a move, for God's sake.

"Good. I was going to say 'ladies first'." Jack says with a cocky grin. Both of them walk toward the shimmering pool of a Stargate.

She has never seen anything so wonderful in her whole life. She has read about the Stargate for years, but up close and personal it was far more amazing than anything she's ever seen in her whole life, "My God. Look at this! I mean, the energy the 'gate must release to create a stable wormhole is… it's astronomical, to use exactly the right word!" She lets a finger touch it, and waves move out from it as if it were a pond with ripples. "You can actually see the fluctuation in the event horizon!" she murmurs in awe.

He puts a hand on the small of her back, and pushes her through the event horizon before taking one step to fall into the wormhole after her.

Sam knew that going through the wormhole wasn't going to be fun. She wasn't just bragging when she talked about the things she'd experienced. But this was nothing like being a pilot, or a soldier, or even like giving birth. It was worse.

"Ugh. I think I'm going to be sick, ugh," Sam groans. She immediately regrets it. She's supposed be making herself look professional.

"Maybe you shouldn't have had that big lunch, huh?" Jack laughs. Suddenly a bunch of people in strangely old-fashioned clothing pop out of nowhere with the guns loaded. Each of them lower their own guns on the people.

Then Daniel comes out from behind a pillar, and holds his hands up in the air saying, "Cha'hali! Cha'hali. Lower your guns." Guns go down all around, and then Daniel grins, looking at Jack, "Hello, Jack. Welcome back."

Jack grins in Daniel's direction, and then walks right past him to Skaara. Skaara salutes, and Jack returns the gesture before pulling him into a hug. Sam's stomach twists in jealousy. She'd read about Skaara in the mission reports of course, but she hadn't realized that he and Jack were like this. Jeeze, Jack was good with all kids of all ages. She was still figuring out how to be the mother of a small child. She was pretty sure that she wouldn't be good with a teenager.

After Jack and Skaara greet one another, Jack turns to Daniel and says, "Daniel, how you doing?"

"Uh, good, you?" Daniel says, fairly awkwardly. Jack might be good with kids, but he wasn't good with scientists, Sam thinks glumly, knowing that she herself is a scientist.

More greetings go around the group, including the unveiling of Daniel's completely gorgeous foreign wife.

Sam is feeling quite insecure so she starts talking technobabble. That is definitely one area in which she shines, "Amazing. This is what was missing from the dig at Giza. This is how they controlled it! It took us fifteen years and three supercomputers to MacGyver a system on Earth."

Daniel and Jack are looking at each other, completely confused about she's talking about.

Sam doesn't notice that she's not getting the approval she wants so desperately, "Look how small it is!"

"Captain!" Jack practically yells, finally getting her attention. She turns and looks at him as he holds up his hand, indicating Daniel.

"Oh right, excuse me. Doctor Jackson, I presume. I'm Doctor Samantha Carter," she says, extending her hand to him.

Then they start talking mission objectives, and Sam works to catch up. She's been in charge before. But she's never been in charge in the battle against hostile aliens.

-0-0-0-

Skaara comes up to Jack as he's sitting at the party. He has a thick accent, but he speaks English now. "O'Neill… your lighter?" he offers, holding it out.

Jack smiles at him. Now that he has a kid, he has even a greater relationship with Skaara. "No, it's yours, I gave that to you to keep. Remember?" he says with a smile.

"Thank you, "Skaara says, leaving.

"You know he's never had that out of his sight the whole time you were gone," Daniel tells him.

"Yeah?" Jack says with a smile. Right now, Jack wants to gather up Charlie and Daniel, the closest things that he's had to a best friend, and tell them that he has a son. But they'd have questions, especially Daniel. Questions that it would be very awkward to answer when Sam was within earshot.

-0-0-0

Jack is walking down the hallway after the mission, thinking about the fact that tomorrow he will get to see his son again. He's also contemplating whether or not he could get away with a phone call this late tonight.

He sees Daniel standing there and greets them. He's looking almost as bad as Jack was right after he Sam left.

Except, Jack realizes, Daniel is much worse off. He lost a wife. A wife who died because she refused to let some alien take her as his wife. A wife who died right in his arms.*

"Hey," Jack says.

"They don't know what to do with me. And I don't know what to do with myself," Daniel says with a laugh that isn't really a laugh.

"C'mon, let's get out of here," Jack says, knowing that this is more important than calling his son, at least for the night.

-0-0-0-

Jack's gut is wrenching as he listens to Daniel talk about his wife. He knows that he shouldn't be jealous of Daniel. He just lost his wife, after all. But he had a wife, for a year. Jack only got Samantha for three months. And now, it looked like he was going to have to look at her… at work… at their homes as they shuffled the kid back and forth, every day for the rest of his lie. And there would never again be anything between them.

"I have a son," Jack blurts.

Daniel stares at him, blinking for several seconds. "What?"

"He's… three," Jack informs him.

"You're telling me that when you were seriously considering blowing yourself up on Abydos last year, you had a freaking toddler depending on you?" Daniel demands in a voice edged in anger. Jack doesn't understand exactly why there is so much anger in his voice. He doesn't know that Daniel is an orphan.

"No… well… yes, but I didn't know about him," Jack stammers.

"So, if the mom kept you from it so long, why now?" Daniel asks.

"We, ah… lost contact. It was a misunderstanding, but neither of us really had a way to get a hold of the other one."

"So what changed," Daniel says.

"Ah…Tyler's mom is Captain Carter," Jack admits.

"Sam? You knocked up Sam?" Daniel says.

"'Knocked up'?" Jack says with a look of disapproval.

"Sorry, that was disrespectful, I'm just surprised. She's really beautiful."

"Hey!" Jack protests.

"Sorry," Daniel laughs.

"I didn't look surprised that your wife was beautiful," Jack says.

Daniel laughs again, "So are you and Sam going to get married?"

"Oh, that's highly unlikely," Jack says, taking a swig of his bear.

"Why?" Daniel probes companionably.

Jack sighs, "Well, she hasn't… exactly put up with any of my advances. She's letting me around the kid. I don't want to push things… I can't lose the chance to be around them."

"She wouldn't keep you from your son," Daniel says with absolute certainly, even though they've only had a few technobabble conversations.

"I don't know, she's really overprotective of him."

"If she keeps him from you, you could sue for custody," Daniel points out.

Jack shakes his head, "I can't imagine doing that to her, it would destroy her."

"It's ok, you're going to get to know that kid of yours."

"And we're going to bring your wife back," Jack promises.

***Ok, we're moving farther from cannon, I'll admit it.**


	10. Part 2 Chapter 4

**The Next Day**

"Daddy!" Ty says, flinging himself into his arms as soon as he walks through the door.

"Hey, buddy," Jack says, holding onto him and giving him a light kiss on his cheek. He's never kissed his son before. He didn't feel comfortable enough before, but suddenly, seeing how much his son missed him, it felt right. His son smells like baby shampoo, and color crayons. Jack decides that this is the most amazing smell I the world.

He sets his son down. "Can we go fishing?" Tyler asks excitedly. Jack mentioned fishing before the Abydos mission, and his son's been thinking about it ever since.

"Not today, it's raining," Jack points out.

"Doesn't that make the fish bite better?" Tyler asks.

Jack laughs, "Actually, that's true, however; I am not going to take a kid out in the rain to fish."

Tyler starts pouting. Jack grins, "I brought you that new book I promised," he says, pulling it out of his bag.

"Read it to me?" the kid says holding it up.

"I will, in a bit. I've got to talk to your mom first," he says, giving the kid's head a rub before heading into the kitchen.

"Carter," he says, walking into the room. "I, ah… wanted to give you something," he says, handing her an envelope.

She smiles, and opens it. "Jack, I can't accept this, this check is for thousands of dollars!"

"I know, I guess you could say I'm way behind on child support. I'll get you more… eventually. And I started a college savings account for him, too…" he says.

"Jack, you don't have to do that," Sam whispers, "I took care of him." Her voice has a dark edge of challenge in it.

"I want to, Sam," he says, closing her hands over the envelope. He shifts on his feet, "So… the General put us on different teams." General Hammond had made that announcement at the debriefing a few hours before. Hammond didn't like demoting him, but he didn't have much of a choice if Sam and Jack were going to be separate. No-one but Jack O'Neill was really qualified to lead people through the gate besides himself, and unfortunately his body (not to mention his daughters) wouldn't let him do missions like that anymore.

"It doesn't matter much right now, both teams are going through the gate tomorrow," Sam says.

"I know, but it might matter someday, and I just wanted you to know… I wasn't pushing for you to be on SG-2."

She's confused by this, "I thought you asked us to be on separate teams."

"I did, but I wanted you to be the one that got to keep SG-1."

She smiles, "Well, I thank you for that, but it was a completely illogical wish."

The combat of the day has caused a stray hair to lose the hold of the hair gel and fall on her face. It's begging him to wipe it away. He remembers the moan she used to make when he'd wake her up by running his hand through her hair. The same motion he used on his own hair when he was nervous. Only, when he did it on her, it didn't make her look ridiculous. It looked right on her. In fact, her new hairstyle looked a bit like it had been designed for him to run his fingers through.

He wants to touch her so bad that he aches, but instead he just turns and walks into the living room to read to his son.

Sam stands in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, watching her son curled up next to Jack on the couch. She remembers the way that it felt when _she_ was tucked into all of his nooks and crannies in the way that her son is right now. She allows herself to remember, for the first time in four years, how safe she felt when she was with him.

She's desperate for that safety now.

But she has to keep her distance. She can't let him get to close, or he's going to figure out that she doesn't really deserve her son.

-0-0-0-

"Well, the kid finally conked out," Jack says, coming down the flight of stairs. "So, I guess I'll see you at work tomorrow."

She smiles, "Wait a second, Jack." And then she starts walking up the stairs. He follows her, and her heart starts to pound at a thousand miles a minute when she walks past the kid's room and into her own.

He swallows hard, and gives a brief smile when she turns back to him uncertainly. He feels weird being here. He felt right at home inside her tent. The two of them, huddled together on a cot made for one. With a big empty tent, a tent made for dozens, but only containing two.

This is different. The bed is made for two people, but the room is made for one. It's all Sammy in there.

She walks over to his closet, and he stands awkwardly in the doorway. She grabs down a box, "You know when you got to get your film developed, and there is always that box to check, "Single, or double?"

He stares at her, still having absolutely no idea where she is going with that. He gives her a slow nod.

"I always click double," she tells him slowly.

And suddenly Jack can't breathe. He stares at the box in her arms like a man starving.

"It's every picture that I've ever taken of Tyler," she says, putting the box in his arms.

Jack has never wanted anything in his whole life as badly as he wants that box of pictures, but he also knows that it's too much, that he can't take this from her. "I can't, Sam."

She traces his name on the cover of the box. Jack. "I got them for you," she whispers, "It was stupid, I know. I didn't believe that I would ever see you again, but… they were always yours, Jack."

His eyes are wet, "Sam, I can't thank you enough… it's…" but there are no words to come after that. No, there is no description of what that box of pictures mean to him.

"And you asked about your mom before, I never gave you an answer. But yeah, I think we should meet her. Where does she live anyway?" she asks softly.

"Chicago, she'd be willing to fly down any time that's convenient," Jack says.

Sam nods her head. "So, the weather is supposed to be nice tomorrow, did you want to take Tyler fishing?"

"Sure, I can pick you guys up…" Jack begins.

"If you wanted… it could just be a father and son thing." Then, suddenly, she pauses, "Unless, of course, I mean if you don't want to have to take care of him, or something, I would be more than willing to…"

He stops her, "You trust me that much?"

She nods her head, but she refuses to look at him. Of course she trusts him, but doesn't that just mean that's dangerous? Doesn't that just mean that he has the power to destroy them all? But what choice does she have? She either has to trust him with her son for an afternoon or trust him for a lifetime.

**The Next Day**

It's not a situation Jack ever pictured himself in. Charlie threatening Carter's life. Well, actually, it was something Charlie had talked about a lot. Back when Jack was curled up in the fetal position waiting for death. But it wasn't something he ever imagined now. Charlie knew how much she meant to him. That she was the only person, the only person he had ever imagined spending his life with.

But it wasn't really Charlie.

"Don't shot," he says, looking into Carter's eyes. He wants to tell her that everything is going to be alright, but the words won't come out of his mouth.

Charlie climbs into the elevator, and he pushes the gun of an airman who didn't listen to his pleading down, "Don't shot," he says, never losing eyes with Carter until the elevator door slams shut. Jack takes off running, having noted what floor Charlie had sent them too. He starts to pray, to no-one in particular, that he isn't going to be too late.

And there is Charlie, not the thing that looks like Charlie, but Charlie standing in the elevator "Well, it's about time. Gimme a hand here."

Jack looks at his friend in shock, "Charlie, what the hell's going on?"

"I don't have a clue, Colonel, but she's hurt bad. We have to get her to the infirmary," Charlie says looking panicked.

Then Jack's eyes fall to the crumpled form of on the floor, "Carter?"

"For God sakes, Jack, my name is Samantha," she says, glaring at him.

He smiles at her, "Can we lift her?" he asks, looking at Daniel. He doesn't know why he thinks Daniel might know more about medical things than he does, but he really doesn't know anything.

"I don't think I have a spinal injury," Sam informs them.

"So, I can just carry her down there?" Jack asks those around.

"Let's wait for the infirmary staff to get up here, they've already been called," Hammond informs Jack.

-0-0-0-

"How are you doing?" Jack asks softly, coming to Sam's infirmary bed.

"Fine. They're sending me home for the rest of the day. They say that I'll be cleared for active duty again by tomorrow. How is Charlie?"

"Not everyone is nice enough to ask after their attacker," he says.

"It wasn't his fault, Jack," she says.

He sits down on the edge of the bed without being asked, "I know, but I just can't get that image out of my head. Someone threatening your life like that."

"I'm fine," she says, "Well, I'd better get ready to leave, then."

"I'll take you home," he says.

"No, you've got to stay here, Charlie…" she says.

He smiles, "They're not doing the surgery until tomorrow. Daniel is going to stay with him."

"Daniel needs sleep," she says.

"Daniel isn't going to sleep no matter where we go. He just saw his first dead body. Well, first dead body that was under 1000. Well, first dead body that was under a 1000 that didn't come back to life." Jack was wrong about that, but he didn't know that Daniel's first dead bodies had been his parents.

She nods her head, knowing that she's right. There is no way that she would have got any sleep right after their relationship blew up, and Jack hadn't died,"But I'll be fine at home. My dad is there."

"True, but I think to spend a whole day in bed with you. I think I'm a couple of years overdue," he says.

She giggles, "Ok, just let me change."

"We can pick up some movies on the way home if you want," he offers.

"Ok, but if we go to the video store, we are going to have to get Toy Story."

Jack laughs, "Has he seen it a bunch?"

"Enough that he has it memorized. He had his own copy, but he wore it out. Seriously! I didn't even know that was possible. I haven't got the chance to buy him a new one yet, so…"

"We would pretty much make his night," Jack says.

Sam nods.

"I've never seen Toy Story," Jack admits.

"Well, that is something that is going to have to be fixed immediately," Sam says, grabbing her clothes and walking past him. She's careful about the back flap of the hospital gown, but the beautiful view of those gorgeous legs, that's enough to make him relive all his favorite seconds with Samantha. He remembers what those felt like wrapped around his hips. He remembers the involuntary squeeze they made whenever she came. And that brought back the way she said his name with a sharp intake of breath. Like she was swallowing his identity whole.

She looks back at him self-consciously. "What?" she asks.

"Nothing," he says. But she remembers that look in his eyes. It was the look of a starving man before a banquet. The look someone gives a mirage in the desert. And the look he gave her every time they were alone in the tent, in that second before their bodies joined.

She just about invited him to come to the bathroom to help her dress. She could claim she couldn't lift her arm or something, right?

He glances away, blushing, and she uses the loss of eye contact to escape. But as she walks away, she thinks of all the times she make him blush, from the middle of his chest all the way up to his ears. And all it took was a few words of dirty talk whispered in his ear.

-0-0-0-

Surely this was the definition of perfection, Jack thought, looking around at the bed. Sam was laying on the other side, and their son was between them.

"Daddy, watch, he's going to say it again," Tyler informs him.

"To infinity and beyond," Jack quotes with his son.

Tyler giggles at the enthusiasm with which his dad says it.

"Tyler, it's time for you to be going to bed," Sam says softly.

"No, mommy, wait until it's over," Tyler whines.

"Ok, but as soon as it's over, you brush your teeth and go right to bed, then," Sam instructs.

Tyler eagerly nods his head, turning back to the television.

"Pushover," Jack accuses.

"Five minutes left," Sam mouths.

"Genius," Jack amends.

-0-0-0-

"Ok, the kid's out, now on to films made for adults," Jack says, popping the movie Sam had requested in. "'An Affair to Remember', sounds like it just about belongs in the porno section."

Sam starts laughing historically.

"What is so funny?" Jack asks.

"Oh, nothing you're just in for an… unpleasant surprise."

The movie begins. "It's in black and white?" he asks.

"Yes, Jack, yes it is," Sam says.

"There aren't going to be any sex scenes in this movie, are there?" he asks, handing her a bag of popcorn.

"Nope," she says with a grin.

-0-0-0-

Jack glares at the closing credits, "That was the worse movie ever," he says firmly.

Sam giggles, "It's widely considered the most romantic movie of all time."

"She should have just told him she couldn't walk," Jack says.

"Yeah, she should have told him," Sam says looking in his eyes.

"And he should have known she'd never really want to be with anyone else," Jack adds now knowing the game that they are playing at.

"Well, the evidence was pretty damning," Sam says.

"Still."

"Yeah, still," she says scooching down so she is laying on her side on the bed facing him.

"But you know, they got together in the end," he says.

"Even though she was hurt," Sam says, reaching over to take his hand. Jack scoots down on the bed next to her.

"So maybe it was a really good movie after all," he says, taking a hand to run through her hair.

"I think so, very romantic," Sam replies, scooting closer to them. Close enough that the familiar scent enters both of their nostrils. Some… themness… that can't be hidden by changing from military issued to their own soaps and shampoos.

Jack slowly puts his hand on Sam's cheek. A sure sign, she remembers, that's he's about to kiss her.

Jacob enters the room, "Sam, did you need anything before I go to bed…" He freezes, "Jack, I didn't realize you were still here."

Jack stands up quickly, "No, I was just leaving, the movie was done."

"Jack, I didn't mean to chase you out of my daughter's room," Jacob says, sounding truly apologetic.

"No, seriously, it's fine. I'll see you tomorrow at work, Sam. Have a good night Jacob," Jack says as he leaves the room.

Jacob walks over to turn off the television that's finished a movie, and pops the rented flick out of the film. "Well, no wonder," he says, holding up the movie title toward his daughter, "Your mother always said no-one could help melting after a movie like that."

"Actually, he said it was the worse movie known to man," Sam corrects.

"I'm sure he did, sweetie, that's why your faces were an inch apart when I walked in."


	11. Part 2 Chapter 5

**The Next Day**

Jack senses someone standing in the doorway of his office. Whoever it was very quiet, but Jack is black-ops, and he can tell.

He turns to her, "How did you know I'd be here?"

"It was clever, Jack. Telling people you didn't know where your office was, returning memos with a "return to sender". Turning your lights off and hiding under your desk whenever your black ops training alerted you someone was looking for you."

"But not clever enough," Jack says.

"Well, I am a genius," Sam says with a shrug of her shoulders.

There is silence for long moment, "I'm sorry about Charlie, Jack."

Jack doesn't say anything, just shakes his head.

"I know it must have killed you… to tell Teal'c what to do… to shut it off," she says softly.

"I killed my best friend," he says with tears running down his face.

"Jack, he told you… he didn't want to live as a Goa'uld," Sam says.

"Maybe, with more time we would have figured out a way to save him," Jack says.

"We tried everything, and he was going to get away. There is no telling what kind of suffering Charlie would have gone through… What kind of suffering he would have caused if you hadn't done it," Sam says, touching his arm.

"No, I gave up on him, and you never give up on anyone, Sam."

She pulls him into a hug, and cries right along with him for a while.

"Sam, next time it could be you, and… I couldn't do that to you," he whispers.

"It could just as easily be you," she says, with terror lurking beneath her eyes.

"I have to pick up my mom from the airport," he says standing up.

"We could get an airman to do it," she offers, standing up right after him.

"No, I'd better. Besides, I'm going to have to put on a happy face for Ty anyway, what does it matter if I start an hour earlier?"

"I find myself glad I never introduced Tyler to Charlie," Sam says with a sad smile.

"He would have loved that kid, you know. I didn't even tell him yet," Jack says sadly.

This surprises Sam. She knows that Jack is a very private person, but she thought that he would have told people by now.

He sees the thoughts on her face, "I'm not ashamed of our son, Sam. I've told people: Daniel, Teal'c, my family. I just… haven't seen much of Charlie lately."

"I stole you from him again," she smiles, remembering the first days of their romance overseas.

"I'll see you at home in an hour," Jack says.

And Sam pauses in awe. When did Jack start thinking of her house as 'home'?

-0-0-0-

"Hey, bean sprout," a stout woman swings Tyler up into her arms for a bear hug.

"I can't breathe, and you're crushing my lungs, Grandma!" Tyler protests.

"Wow! Sorry there, Snookums," she says, loosening her grip.

"My name is Ty," he informs her pulling back from the hug.

"She knows your name, Bud," Jacks says, walking into the house behind his mother, carrying two large coolers, "She is just calling you nicknames like I do."

"Mrs. O'Neill, I have to know, did you call your son Snookums when he was small?" Sam asks with a grin hiding in her face.

"I still do, don't I?" Mrs. O'Neill says, smiling at her son.

Sam doesn't hide the giggle now.

"Are we eating now?" Jack asks his mother.

"Of course, get some hot dish in this little one," Mrs. O'Neill says.

"Hot dish?" Sam asks.

"It's a Midwest thing. I'd never heard of it before we moved to Minnesota. It's… meat and vegetables and pasta all in one big…" Jack explains.

"Hot dish?" Sam asks.

"Yeah," he says, looking a little bashful at this new family tradition.

"I don't like hot dishes," Ty says crossing his arms.

"Of course you do, Bud, and if you suck up real good you're going to also get a bar," Jack says.

"Rice crispies, chocolate, and peanut butter," Mrs. O'Neill explains.

"You can put the food in the kitchen, Snookums," Sam says with a grin.

"Ok, Angel," he says, getting revenge on her for calling him a name this only his mother can get away with.

"Angel?" Jacob says with his 'you've got to be kidding me' look.

Sam blushes, "Ah… when Jack and I first met."

"When Sam was saving our ass..." he glances at the little boy, looking up at his father for a story, "...sets."

"Jack was a little loopy from blood loss," Sam says.

"Actually, I thought I was dead," he informs her.

"Like I said, loopy from the blood loss," Sam interrupts.

"And then the sunlight touches on her hair, and it looks like a halo," Jack says with a shrug of his shoulders.

"You never told me that," Sam says, smiling at him.

"Well, thank you for saving my son," Mrs. O'Neill says genuinely.

"Daddy, I want more war stories," Tyler says, reaching up with his arms, a universal childhood signal for 'pick me up'.

"You are a little young for war stories," Jack says, swinging the kid into his arms.

Jacob hands him an open bottle of beer.

"Daddy, most people have a Daddy and a Mommy, don't they?" Tyler asks.

"Yeah babe," he says, "And you have two parents, too."

"Right, but I only used to have one, and both of my parents only have one. Mommy only has a daddy, and daddy only has a mommy. How come?" he asks.

The adults all sit in silence, "Sweetie," Sam says, "Remember how we told you that Grandma died when I was little?"

Tyler nods.

"Ok, so that is why you only have one grandma," Sam says softly.

"How come I only have one grandpa?" Tyler asks, looking at his father.

"You have a grandpa," Jack says in a tone that would clue an adult on to the fact that they should switch subjects, but a three year old doesn't take notice of that.

"Will I get to meet him? I'm meeting lots of relatives lately," Tyler says.

"Yes, you are," Jack says giving him a smile, "But Grandpa lives too far away, so you won't ever get to meet him."

"Don't lie to him," Mrs. O'Neill's says fiercely.

"Mom, I don't want to exactly explain spousal abuse to a three year old," Jack says before he can think about it.

"What is that?" Tyler says, his tongue not quite able to try out the new word.

Jack desperately tries to think up a lie. But Jacob breaks in. This is the first he's heard of Jack's past, but he knows that Jack and his mother shouldn't have to explain this.

"Sweetie, remember when your mother told you that her job is fighting bad guys?" Jacob asks.

Tyler nods.

"Well, Jack's daddy is one of those bad guys."

Tyler looks up at her father, "Was he really?"

Jack swallows a lump in his throat, and the makes eye contact with his mother, "Yeah, he was."

"Mommy and you could get him, you fight bad guys, right?" Tyler asks.

How simple the world of a child is. Jack can't figure out how to explain away this vigilante kind of justice.

Sam breaks in, "Remember when you hit Daddy?"

Tyler pulls himself closer to his father, "Sorry, daddy."

"Why was that wrong?" Jack presses, seeing where Sam is going with this.

"'Cause you don't fight your family," Tyler says.

"Exactly," Jack says.

"Oh, ok," Tyler says.

-0-0-0-

"You have everything you need?" Jack asks later that night, as he looks into his guest room.

"I'm fine, son, and I'm proud of you," Mrs. O'Neill says, pulling her son to her for the thousandth hug of the day.

"You're proud of me for having a kid I didn't know about?" Jack asks guilty. His mom had been cool about this whole thing, maybe a bit too cool.

"He's a great, boy, Son, and as soon as you knew about him you did the right thing. That's what counts," his mother assures him. She grins at him, "So what's going on with your Angel?"

He blushes like a teenage boy being teased about his first crush, "Nothing, mom."

"Come on, I've seen the way that you two looked at each other. There is something intense going on there," his mother says.

He sits down on the edge of the bed, "It was very intense. So intense, that sometimes it scares me," he nearly whispers.

"She burned you once," his mother with a nod.

"She didn't do it on purpose," he says.

"No, she didn't," his mother repeats. When he was a kid he hated these sorts of conversations. He used to just want his mother to tell him what to do, instead of repeating everything that he said until he figured it out for himself. Now, as an adult, he's come to enjoy the genius of it.

"I never really stopped loving her," he whispers.

"You might want to tell her that."

"What if she doesn't feel the same?"

"Then you'll go back to just being the father of her kid, nothing ventured, nothing gained," his mother says with a smile.

"I was going to propose to her… back then," he admits, looking at the wall.

His mother smiles, "Well, son I think I'd hang on to that ring, because I saw the same look in her eyes that I saw in yours."

Jack frowns, remembering that the ring is actually at the bottom of his pond. "Ty's cute, though, isn't he?" Jack gushes by way of distraction.

"Oh, he got your energy! And definitely your intelligence. He's a smart one."

"Oh, he's smart, but he doesn't get that from me. His mother is a genius," Jack explains.

"So are you," his mother says.

"Well, you're my mother, you have to say that."

"And how about your high school that made you valedictorian? Did they have to do it, too?" she presses.

"Hey, don't tell the Carters that little detail, ok?" Jack says, glancing into her eyes for a brief moment before they dart away.

"Why would you be hiding that from them?" his mother asks with concern.

"I'm not exactly hiding it," Jack says with a sigh. He doesn't know how to explain this without making Sam look bad, "Look, women have a tough time in the Air Force. So, Sam spends a lot of her time trying to convince people how amazing she is. She is amazing. But, she doesn't exactly need a lot of competition in the intelligence department."

"You spend a lot of time with your son?" Mrs. O'Neill asks.

"Yeah, I see him almost every day. Especially when Sam is off… out of the country. Both of our jobs have us leaving the country for a couple days at a time. We think it's important for me to be there when Sam isn't. I mean, he has Jacob, too," Jack says.

Mrs. O'Neill nods, "I'm glad you get to see him whenever you want to."

"Yeah, I'm pretty lucky," Jack agrees.

Mrs. O'Neill bumps her son's shoulder. Jack can tell there is something else on his mother's mind. He thinks he might know what it is, and he hopes she doesn't broach the topic. He knew he should have said no when Jacob slipped a beer into his hand after dinner.

But she does, "You're drinking, Jack."

"I have a beer every once and a while, mom," he says.

"Children of alcoholics should avoid drinking," she reminds him.

"I know, Mom, and I promise I have it under control," he whispers.

"Ok," she says.

He reaches his hand up and traces a scar on her face, "I would never do that."

"I know, babe," she says hugging him.


	12. Part 2 Chapter 6

**Spoilers for the Broca Divide**

**One month later**

Jack has on nothing more than a towel around his waist, when suddenly he comes into nearly physical contact with Samantha Carter. This, he thinks grumpily, is the danger of having a locker room where the only difference between men and women was the hands on a clock.

"Carter, sorry, didn't know you were in here," he says, quickly pulling a shirt over himself. Sam snakes a hand in the small hairs of his back, and pulls him into a kiss.

"Mmmph!" he says into her mouth. Then he pushes her away, "Carter! Wait! What the hell is going on?"

"I want you," Sam says, grabbing him by his lapels and kissing him fiercely. No, this isn't right. Sam doesn't kiss like this, and she never says 'I want you'. She never asks for anything she wants, especially sexual things. She would dance around whatever she wanted and leave him to figure this out. Something is going on, and he has to figure out what it was.

From inside of her mouth he says, "Why? I mean no!" He pushes her away again. "Carter, this is a little out of line, don't you think?"

She shoves him onto the long wooden benches of the locker room. "Don't you want me?" she asks him, kissing him again.

"No. No, not like this, for crying out loud." He's not going to have sex with her in a freaking locker room. That's not what she deserves. When they have sex again, it's going to be like it was before -private, gentle, and long. He shoves her back once again. "Carter! What's gotten into you?"

And that particular question suddenly makes sense. Of course, something has gotten into her. Probably the same thing that got into the guy who attacked Teal'c a few hours ago.

Sam's lips are on his again, and he rolls her onto the floor. There is a second when he's on top of her where he doesn't want to stop her. He's missed her so much. God, he's missed SEX so much. But she's not in her right mind, and he would never do that to her.

"It's about time you saw a doctor, doctor," he says pulling her up.

-0-0-0-

He can't stand to see her tied down like that. It almost makes him wish that she had never brought her in.

"It will keep her from hurting herself until the sedatives take effect," Janet says, sounding a little bit apologetic herself.

"This pretty much what Johnson has?" Jack asks, suddenly needing justification. He was right in bringing her here, wasn't he?

"Oh, I'd say so, and the other members of the team. This is the strangest thing I've ever seen. C'mon, take a look," the doctor says, leading him over to rooms that look too much like prison cells for Jack's comfort. "We've converted DEFCON 1 living compartments from when this place was a missile silo into isolation chambers. You never know what you're going to bring back through the Stargate. Notice the swelling of the brow ridge? Some are even developing new follicle growth," she says looking in at Johnson.

"Any idea what's causing it?" he wants to ask the doctor if Sam is going to be ok. If there is anything that he can do to make her better.

"Wish I knew. I've got calls in to every specialist in the service, but I've got one hand tied behind my back because of the need to know classification of the Stargate Project," Janet slams the door shut, and walks to the next door. It's an alien virus, and if she doesn't figure out how to cure it, people are going to die. It's a lot of responsibility for one person. "And it's spreading. We got two more in an hour later. I've never seen a behavioral disorder like this. All the victims are acting like animals."

"You think Carter has the same thing?" he asks softly. All of these people are violent. What happened in the locker room had certainly not been gentle, and it certainly wasn't the kind of thing that Sam was usually into. But it had been a long way from the violence these people are demonstrating.

"Mm hmm, behavior fits. All the victims are behaving like primitives," Janet says.

Jack scratches the back of his neck. Right, because Carter would only be interested in him if she was basically a monkey.

Except, once in the desert, she did choose him.

Jack hates the idea of leaving Sam in the infirmary, but he has to go figure out how to solve this. He goes back to the bed where she is strapped down, and runs a hand against her cheek, "I'm going to figure this out, Carter."

-0-0-0-

Jack is staring out the glass at the Stargate. He only left the infirmary to figure out how to solve this, and now he's just cooling his heels. Maybe he should head back to the infirmary, at least until Hammond clears them to go back to that planet. He turns to go back to the infirmary.

"Jack! There you are. Got on the internet to do a little research on Australopithecus and, wow… What happened to you?" Daniel says, taken aback by his friend's injuries.

"Oh, I got into a little wrestling match with Carter," he says, hoping that his sarcasm is going to be bitter enough that Daniel wouldn't press it. Jack can't deal with the emotional part of this, not yet, or he would fall apart.

"Why?" Daniel asks pretty critically.

"I guess she's got whatever Johnson got. I had to drag her off to the infirmary," Jack says, scratching at his arms. He's really hoping that the carefully worded admission will make Daniel stop asking questions.

"What, she start a fight with you like Johnson did with Teal'c?" Daniel asks. Jack should have known, he's a linguist for cripes sake. It's pretty hard to dance around a linguist with words.

He sighs, "No, she uh, she tried to seduce me."

Daniel's eyebrows raise, "Ah… wouldn't that be a good thing?"

"Well, under normal circumstances, sure. But when it is in the public locker room, and she's like a wild animal… not so much."

"Oh," Daniel stands in silence for a second, "So are you getting back together?"

Jack turns to him, shaking his head, "I don't think that whatever just happened meant anything, believe me."

"Well, is she all right? I should go see her," Daniel says tenderly.

Jack's blood boils. A part of him knows that this is irrational. That Daniel is grieving for his wife, and isn't trying to steal Sam from him.

"Why?" Jack asks fiercely.

Daniel might be a linguist, but he isn't so great at body language. He especially misses the body language that indicates when people are interested in them, and when they are jealous.

"What do you mean 'why'? Because I care about her," Daniel says.

Jack grabs Daniel by the lapels, and grunts through his teeth, "Care about her, what does that mean?"

Daniel suddenly realizes that he's screwed. He tries to pull away, and says, "It means I care about her, she's my friend. Now let go!"

"She's not yours to care about," Jack says, wishing he could undo the barbeques where he had invited both of their teams over to their house.

Daniel just barely stops himself from pointing out that she wasn't JACK'S to care about, either. He's figured out by now that Jack has the same problem that Sam had. And he knows that if he gets into a fight with the Colonel, he's not going to come back a winner. "I'm just a friend."

"You just stay away from Samantha, ok?" Jack asks dangerously.

"Okay. Okay, Jack. I think you should come with me to the infirmary, okay? Just let go of me and… let go of my arm!" Daniel shouts. Jack lays a hard punch on them. Daniel falls back on the shelf, and crashes to the ground. Jack ignores someone shouting for a guard, and jumps on top of Daniel. He's hauled off him after a couple of seconds.

-0-0-0-

He closes his eyes. Tyler. Sam. He has to… to… He closes his eyes again. He has to focus, and the only thing he can focus on is: Tyler. Sam.

Janet comes into the cell, "Doc. Doc?" he pleads.

"Did you say something?" Janet asks, and there are too many words in the simple sentence for him to process. But she's looking at him, so he should speak now. He has to save her.

"Give more…" he grunts.

"What? Give more what?" Janet asks.

"More," he says, thrusting his arm toward her, completely annoyed that he can't find the word for exactly what he wants more of.

"An injection? You mean you want more sedative? You've already had more than the maximum safe dosage, twice as much as anyone else because you've been more violent," Janet says. But the only thing that Jack understands out of that is that she's shaking her head. She's not going to save Sam.

He grunts more loudly, "Give," he demands with all of his force.

"No. It's not safe," Janet insists. First, do no harm. Even if there is an alien virus that might just wipe the human race off the planet.

"Give! Give," Jack grunts as loudly as he can.

"Why are you so insistent?" Janet gives him the shot, and he leans back, feeling the relief. He waits for the clouds to ease from his brain a little, just a little.

"Doc!" Jack demands. She can't leave yet. She needs to stay so they can figure this out. So he can figure out how to save Sam.

"Colonel O'Neill?" Janet says, surprised that she seems to actually be talking to the second-in-command of the base.

"Me," Jack says, recognizing his own name.

Janet smiles at him, "So you are still in there somewhere."

Jack is confused. He doesn't feel like himself. He's never gotten drunk, not after his father, and he's not exactly the medication type. So the only altered state of consciousness he has ever had is a dream. "Dream? Dream?" he grunts.

"I'm afraid not, Colonel. It's very real. This is interesting. Enough sedative must knock back the primitive mind. Colonel, listen to me. I am not going to be able to keep you at this level for very long; it is too dangerous. It could cause permanent brain damage," Janet says again, using far too many words for him to process. He needs to understand what is going on. He needs to figure out how to help.

"What... What is it?" Jack asks, annoyed at how difficult it is for him to get the words out.

"It's a parasitic virus. All we can tell is that is seems to mess with body chemicals, all of them. Testosterone levels skyrocket, thus the aggressive behavior. It's histaminolytic, which means it breaks down histamine, we… w..." Janet says.

Jack still doesn't understand everything that she is saying to him, but he knows what Janet needs to do. He also knows it was something that she would only do with his permission. More than that, only something she would do if he convinces her to. "Experiment on me," he pleads.

"Experiment on you? I'm sorry, I can't do that," Janet says, shaking her head.

He looks into her eyes, "Use me." Then he pauses, and closes his eyes, "Save her."

And Janet finds herself hoping that someday, she will be loved like that.

-0-0-0-

That was a nice dream. Well, not really. Usually when she had sex dreams about Jack, the sex was exactly the same as when they had sex for real. The sex in the dream was rough, and… Jack told her no. It must be because she's worried about him rejecting her.

Then she realizes: it was not a dream.

She slams her eyes shut, and feels a tear sneak out of them.

Because Jack told her no.

-0-0-0-

Jack stands in her doorway for a while. She realized that he was there right away, but takes her sweet time to acknowledge him. She turns to him, and says, "I'm sorry, sir."

The words kick him in the gut for a second before he sees her face. "Why?"

She blinks at him, "I attacked you, Sir."

And he understands her in a flash. And he swears to himself he's never going to let another misunderstanding get between them. "Sammy," he says, moving over toward her, with a smile on his face, "Why do you think I said no?"

It's a question she doesn't want to ask herself. She shrugs.

"Sammy… I'm not big on public sex. Nor on partners whose behavior is being controlled by alien virus," he says.

She looks at him with home in her eyes, "That was it?"

"That was it," he says. He watches her relax. "I didn't know you were open to… that," he says, searching her eyes.

And she gets a smile on her face. He'd forgotten about that smile. It was glorious, because it didn't look sexual. To anyone who didn't know her, it was just a smile, barely different from her others. But he knew what it meant, and it was a yes.

"So… dinner?" he asks.

"You don't have to…" she begins, shaking her hand. She is his; he doesn't have to go through the motions with her. They are so far beyond the first date.

"Samantha, you're getting dinner," he says, "You don't have a mission Friday night, do you?"

She shakes her head.

"Do you think your dad can babysit?" he asks.

She nods.

"Ok then," he pauses, looking at her for a while, "Do we kiss at work?"

"I don't think so," she says.

"Ok, then," he says, turning to walk away.

"Jack?" she asks.

He turns to her.

"Best alien virus ever," Sam says.

"Yeah, I got to punch Daniel," he says, turning without explaining.

"What?" she asks, running after him down the hallway.


	13. Part 2 Chapter 7

**Four Days Later**

"These are beautiful flowers, dad. Thanks!" Tyler says, grabbing them out of his father's hands and running off.

Sam grabs her coat. "Dad, can you make sure that those go into water before too long?" she asks her father. He nods.

"Those were for you," Jack explains, nodding after the flowers.

"I figured. You can't really blame him. Most of the time, when you walk through that door, you do have something for the kid. This is what you get for spoiling your kid rotten." she says with a grin, "He's right, they're beautiful."

He puts her hand on her back as he guides her to the car. All the parts of them in contact feel like they are on fire, in the most amazing way.

As soon as Jack puts the key into the ignition, opera music comes on. "Ah… you can change the station to whatever you want."

"You like opera music?" she asks tilting her head at him.

He shrugs.

"That's so sweet!" he says.

"I've got a tip for you Carter; Colonels don't like to be called 'sweet'."

"Huh, noted. I've got a tip for you… girls like it when you learn their first name," she teases back.

"I know your name, Samantha, I just prefer Carter," he responds.

"Well, don't, because I share that name with my father, and your son. And when you say my name, I want there to be no doubt that you're only thinking of me," She says.

"Trust me, they don't enter my mind when I look at you," he says with a grin.

She fidgets so softly that most people probably wouldn't have even picked up on it, but Jack notices. "What?"

"It's just… if we didn't have a kid, would we still be here right now?" Sam asks.

"Oh, God, Sammy, yes. I love that kid with all of my heart. And let me assure you I would be in his life no matter what. But this, tonight, it's not about Tyler."

Sam smiles, "Ditto."

Jack gently reaches over and touches her arm. He runs a hand down his arm. He traces the lines on her palm again. She's on the other side of him now, so it's the other hand. This hand is different. The life line is shorter, but only by a bit. The love line is just as deep, but longer, and it has a break in the middle.

He holds her hand in his, and turns to her to share a quick smile.

"I've missed the way you always have to tickle my hand before you can hold it," she whispers.

"I've missed the way…" but the thoughts all jumble over each other in his head.

Sam resists the urge to tease him. She knows this relationship is too new for that. "Hey, it's ok," she says, giving his hand a squeeze.

"I missed the way you don't care if I share less than you. I missed the way you bite the edge of your lips whenever you get confused, which is much more likely to happen in a conversation than a physics problem. I missed the way you giggle whenever I flirt. And I missed the way you look at me. I just missed you, Samantha."

Sam feels like her chest is going to explode, "Jack," is the only response she can get out.

"You look really nice," he says after a few seconds of silence.

"You do, too," Sam says. And Jack does look nice in dress clothes. But it's nothing like he looked in his Class As. Or in her all-time favorite outfit for him; tight jeans, white t-shirt, and a leather jacket.

"Hey, in Iraq, you said you had a motorcycle," Jack says.

"Yeah… I sold it when I was pregnant," she says.

"Why?" he asks.

"Because mothers don't go around riding motorcycles," she says.

"Not going to lie, that's a little disappointing," he says, giving her a quick glance.

"Jack?" she pauses, "Did you have anything to do with my getting command of SG-2?"

"I mentioned you be good for it before Charlie got it, but that's it, Carter. I wouldn't ever… influence you career because of personal things."

"I appreciate that," she says in an almost-whisper.

Jack has pulled up in front of a fancy restaurant. A really fancy restaurant. "Jack," Sam says, gasping his breath into her mouth.

He turns to her, grinning at the sound.

"This place is really nice."

"Yeah," he says slowly.

"I just never pictured…" she says, stopping quickly when she realizes that she is bound to offend him.

"What, did you think I was going to take you to the SGC mess hall?" he asks.

"Not exactly. It's just… we never really dated, did we?" she asks, stunned.

"Ah… and you were going to skip this date," he reminds her, opening up the door. He walks around the car, and holds his hand up to her when she steps down. But in the time that he was out of the car, Sam has begun to panic.

"I've never really done this," she quickly confesses.

"Sammy, if you'd rather leave and go spend time with our kid, or watch the stars on my roof, or hell, have dinner at the freaking officer mess, that's fine. But they have dancing in there, and I know how you love to dance," he says, holding his hand out for her.

She takes it with a smile. As soon as she's out of the truck, she leans forward to capture his mouth in a kiss. It's the first time that they've kissed in four years, but their lips remember each other. It's a few minutes before they pull away. He runs a hand slowly over her face, "Sammy."

"Let's go eat, and dance."

-0-0-0-

The slow walk to the front porch finally ends. They kiss gently, and then Jack takes a step back.

Sam grabs onto his lapels, "Where are you going, flyboy?" she whispers.

"Home," Jack says.

"Come in," Sam says.

"Just because we decided that we were going to have sex, doesn't mean we have to do it on our first date," he says.

"Jack, this is far from our first date, and it's been four years," Sam blurts. Then she blushes, "I mean for me, at least."

"It's been four years," he assures her, and she smiles at this.

"I've missed it," Sam says.

"Me?" he asks confused.

"That too, but… you in certain contexts," she says, blushing.

Jack pulls open the screen door.

"Me, too."

-0-0-0-

The bed seems enormous. Before, they had shared a small cot. Now, a queen sized bed seems expansive. Jack scoots over, invading Sam's side of the bed. Her fingers reach across the expanse, and begin to explore the familiar territory.

Suddenly they withdraw. "Sorry," Sam says, shocked at her own actions. She can't do this. Last time… he left. What if he does it again? This time it won't only be her that gets hurt. I will be her son, as well. "I ask you to come up here, and then change my mind. I'm sorry… I don't mean to be a tease."

"It's ok. Just… what happened?" Jack asks.

Sam doesn't say anything for a few seconds.

"Sammy?" he asks, touching her face.

"I… started to worry that you were going to…." Sam says.

"Wham, bam, thank you ma'am?" he asks.

She nods, laughing at how ridiculous it was.

"C'mere," he says, pulling her close. She's snuggled against his chest in the same way that they slept all the nights in the desert.

"Jack, you have to go home, before we fall asleep," Sam mutters after a few minutes.

"Ok, how exactly would my leaving after we decided we're not having sex get rid of your fears?" he asks.

"Jack, our son is in the house. My father is in the house. I wasn't exactly planning on having you stay for breakfast," Sam says.

He reaches over to her alarm clock, "What time does dad get up?"

Sam giggles at him calling her father dad. "Jack, you don't have to stay."

"He's former military, so he probably gets up early. But five o'clock? Is that early enough?" Jack says.

"You seriously want to hold me all night, and then sneak out in the wee hours of the morning?" she asks.

"Yeah, I do," he says snuggling back into bed next to her.

Her body finds all the places in his body where they fit together. She waits for the feeling of peace to come over her again, like it did back in the war.

But the truth is, you can still believe in peace when you have seen war or when your mother has been taken from you. But after you have seen your baby lying in a hospital bed, bruised and broken, heard him scream in pain and fear, then you can't really believe in peace anymore.

**Early the Next Morning**

"Sammy… sweetie, I'm leaving now," he says kissing her forehead.

She smiles up at him.

"I hated to wake you, but I figured that if I didn't…" he says, not sure how to put the thought into words.

"I'm glad you did," she says, smiling up at him.

"I'm not leaving you, Sammy; I'm just leaving," he says.

"You're coming over this afternoon for Ty?" she asks.

"For my family," he gently corrects, "Yeah."

Jack walks down the hallway as quietly as he can. The bathroom door opens.

Jacob has a bemused smile on his face, "Jack," he says with the tone of voice you use when meeting a colleague in the hallway. Not a man sneaking out of your daughter's room in the wee hours of the morning.

"Sir, I can explain…" Jack says.

"Jack, I don't need details."

"Nothing happened," Jack says quickly.

"Jack, you don't have to sneak out of her room because of me," Jacob says with eyebrows raised.

"Ty," Jack says softly.

"Ok, I just didn't want to be the reason," Jacob says, smiling at the younger man.

**The Next Day**

"Love you, bud," Jack says, kissing his son's forehead the next night.

Sam leans forward and gives him a light kiss on the cheek. They are almost out of the door when Tyler says, "There is a monster under the bed."

"Really!" Jack exclaims diving to the floor, and scurrying under the bed with the speed of a black ops officer. "Where, son? Where?"

Tyler sticks his head under the bed, and points. Jack throws wild punches under the bed in that direction, causing Tyler to erupt into giggles.

"Did I get him?" he asks, turning back to Tyler.

"Yeah, can't you see him?" Tyler asks.

"No, there wouldn't be any monsters if adults could see them. Only kids can see them. So, if they come back, you just call them in, or fight them off yourself."

"But monsters are too scary, dad," Tyler complains.

"Oh, no, if they were really scary, they would take on adults, wouldn't they? But they are such chickens that they only deal with children. And you… you could beat up a monster, easy. But if you don't want to, call us in, and we can," Jack says, scooting out from under the bed.

"Thanks, Daddy," Tyler says.

Jack ruffles his son's hair on the way out of the room. Sam closes the door behind them, and takes Jack's hand. She pulls Jack into her room.

"Your dad saw me yesterday morning," Jack tells her. They haven't been alone since then.

"What did he say to you?" she asks. concerned.

"Ah… just shy of a blessing, Carter," he says.

"Really?" she asks.

"Yeah. So what time does the kid wake up? Can I sleep in a bit more tomorrow morning?" Jack asks, turning to the alarm.

"It's already set."


	14. Part 2 Chapter 8

**The Next Night**

No-one told Jack before he became special ops that it meant you never slept again, not really. You rested. You closed your eyes. You even dreamed. But you never lost touch with the world in the complete way he had before his training.

So he knows the second Sam's nightmare begins. He wakes up and pulls her closer to him. He rubs her back and kisses her temple.

She goes rigid, and her eyes open wide. She struggles to get away from him, like he's strangling her. So he moves away from her. Sam jumps out of bed, and starts running. Jack isn't sure exactly how awake she is, so he follows her to protect her.

She runs into her son's room, and pulls his arm out of the blanket. She feels it from the armpit to the wrist. She breathes a sigh of relief, and she pulls the blankets around him again. She kisses his forehead, and then lies next to him.

"Sammy?" Jack asks, his gut wrenching at this action. He's seen stuff like this before. This is what people do when they've undergone trauma.

"It's ok, Jack, you can go home," Sam whispers, smoothing her son's hair.

"Sam, you're not going to sleep here all night, are you? What will he think?" Jack asks.

Sam swallows hard, "I've done it before. I just tell him that he had a nightmare."

"But they're not his nightmares, Sam. Parents are supposed to comfort their children, not the other way around."

She stares at him with her bottom lip quivering.

"Let me comfort you," he says.

"You're going to take him from me," she says, staring at him.

His gut lurches, and he shakes his head, "Sammy, whatever this is, we can't do it in Ty's room."

She nods her head, and gives her son a hug firm enough that he stirs. But he never fully wakes. As soon as Sam is out of his bed Jack wraps his arms around her. They walk back to Sam's bedroom. Sam walks into the closet, and takes out a folder.

"Ty's medical records, from when he was sixteen months old," she says, handing to him.

"Was he sick?" Jack asks.

She shakes her head.

Jack opens up the file, and reads. He's confused; bruises, lacerations, malnutrition, a broken arm... suspected child abuse?

"No, you wouldn't do that," he says, still confused.

She's sobbing.

"No, you did not starve and hit that little boy. No way! Samantha, you love him. You need to tell me what is going on," he says.

"I'm at work one day, and I get the call. My baby boy is in the hospital. So, I drive down there, and I can see Tyler in the hospital room, screaming. He's crying for all he's worth, and there are three nurses holding him down so they can put the stupid cast on his arm. And I try to go in there, try to comfort him. And they won't let me. And the social worker comes, and starts asking me questions," Sam starts.

"You weren't even there," Jack says, even more confused. The only person she lets watch Ty is Jacob, and he can't believe that Jacob did this any more than Sam did.

"No, but I hired her," Sam sobs.

Jack takes her into his arms. Now it makes sense. This is obviously WHY she doesn't let anyone watch him except for Jacob and himself. "It's not your fault, Samantha. It's not your fault."

She pulls away, and shakes her head at him. "Three months, Jack. Before I hired her, he was potty trained, walking and talking. And it wasn't just a couple of words either. It was advanced for a kid his age. What kind of mother doesn't notice…" she begins.

"Lots of things can cause a loss of skills. There is no way you could have known why it happened," he says gently.

"But how can a mother not realize that someone has been starving her baby for three months? I mean, I would get home, and feed him, and he would eat so much. I would tease him, call him the applesauce monster or whatever he was eating. And for three months, that was the only food the kid got. She'd come when I was getting ready for work in the morning. She was supposed to feed him breakfast and lunch."

Jack closes his eyes, suddenly wishing for a time machine he could use to drop back in time to feed his son.

"The… arm," he asks.

It takes Sam three tries to get a word out of her mouth, and that is only for the first one. "She… threw him… against the wall, because he dirtied a diaper," she sobs.

"I assume this… I can't think of a word bad enough for her… she's in jail, right?" Jack asks.

"Probation," Sam says shaking her head, "She did some time right after. When she got out, Dad helped me alert people, so she'll never get another job working with kids," Sam says.

Jack closes his eyes, "Sam… are there any permanent effects?"

"He doesn't remember it. I mean, he doesn't even know," she says.

"That's probably for the best. I can't imagine how to explain to some kid that someone who was supposed to protect him hurt him on purpose," Jack says.

"He has a lot of cavities from the malnutrition."

"Well, they are baby teeth."

"He was small for a long time, but his body rate was back in the normal range a year later. They say there could be… a decrease in mental ability."

"Well, I think we're safe there. Tyler's smart, Sammy," Jack says with a hint of pride.

"I know, but I wonder… how smart would he have been if none of this had ever happened to him?" Sam asks.

He pulls her into his arms again, and rubs her back. "He was screaming for me," she says tearfully.

"He's got you now," Jack says.

Sam pulls away, "The social workers said that it's not my fault, but I hired her, Jack. I left my baby with her for three months, and I never noticed that she was HURTING him. If you were there, Jack, maybe you would have known. Maybe you would have saved him."

"The only difference would be I would be in jail for murdering that ass who laid a hand on my son," Jack says.

"Don't think that I didn't consider it," Say says, completely seriously.

"Samantha, seriously, you're a good mother, and this wasn't your fault. I would never take him away from you," he says, handing the folder back to her.

She throws it on the dresser, and sits back down the bed. He lies down and wraps his arms around her. She still doesn't feel safe, but at least now there isn't a giant secret between them.

Jack doesn't fall asleep, though. An hour after of holding Sam, he does exactly what he told her not to, and stares at his son in bed for a little bit. "I didn't know the monsters were real, buddy," he whispers, before going into the kitchen.

As Jack flicks on the light, he sees Jacob sitting in the darkness, drinking a glass of orange juice. "I'm sorry," Jack says, moving to leave.

"Please, stay," Jacob says. He swirls the orange juice around in the cup. "You know, I never used to like this stuff. We never kept it around in the house when the kids were growing up. Then when Sam came to live with me, back when she was pregnant with Tyler, she craved the stuff." He laughs, "They talk about pickles and ice cream, with Sam it was orange juice with ice cream. Usually in the same glass."

Jack smiles.

"Funny, I started drinking the stuff, and I never stopped. Families are complicated, Jack. They are a combination of the habits, temperaments, likes, dislikes, and habits of a group of people. They're an organic thing, they grow."

"I wish I had there to bring her orange juice," Jack says.

"Maybe next time," Jacob says with a smirk.

Jack smiles, "She told me about what happened with Tyler," Jack says seriously.

Jacob nods, "I knew she would. I retired that next day. If I'd done that when Ty was born…"

"It wasn't your fault," Jack says.

"Maybe not, but I still could have saved him," Jacob pauses, "I didn't know they made casts that small."

"They shouldn't have to," Jack says.

"Ain't that the truth," Jacob says. There is a long pause, "Samantha thinks you're going to take that baby away from us, but you aren't going to, are you, Jack?" the voice is almost pleading.

"No, I don't think I could if I wanted to, and I don't want to," Jack says.

"That's good, because families; they're organic things," Jacob says.

Jack doesn't understand what he means by this phrase that he's repeated twice, until he opens up the fridge. There is a six-pack of Guinness in there, and Guinness is not Jacob's brand.

Jack takes one out, even though he didn't really want to drink right then. He pops it open, and has a sip.

He knows he's a Carter now.

**Two Nights Later**

"Mommy! Time to get up!" Ty says, jumping between his two parents. He stares at his dad in surprise, "Daddy? Were you here all night?"

"Yeah, Mommy and I had a sleepover party," he says quickly, looking at Sam for advice.

"Oh," Ty says with a shrug, "Next time, can you sleep in my room?"

"Ty, you only have a bed for one person, and I have room for two," Sam says, hoping that logic will win out.

"How come Daddy doesn't get his own room? I bet if he got his own room, he'd have more sleepovers."

Jack giggles to himself, thinking that it wasn't likely. "You know what kid, I like having your mom as a roommate."

"If I let you have my room, would you stay forever?" Ty asks.

Jack looks at him, "How about this, I stay forever anyway?"

Ty bounces on the bed.

"I'm still going to go home sometimes. But I'll be here. I'll try to be here every time your mom isn't, and other times too. Not all the time, but I'll always be there when you need me."

"Ok," Ty says, "I want waffles."

"Waffles it is," Jack says.

Sam starts to follow them.

"Sit down, Samantha, your boys are bringing you waffles in bed."

**A Week Later**

"O'Neill, are you mated?" the mayor asks as they walk into some harvest festival.

"Ah… I'm with someone, and we have a son," Jack is never quite sure how to address the "living in sin" thing on primitive planets.

"Is your son your wife's or yours?" the man asks.

"Both of ours," Jack says, too confused by the strange question to correct the man's assumption.

"Of course, but which one of you bore him?" the man asks.

"My wife," Jack says trying not to stare at him.

"I bore the children first in my marriage, twin girls," the man says with a smile, "My wife is expecting our third."

"I'm sorry, did you just say that you were pregnant?" Jack asks the man, trying to keep his chin from dropping to the floor.

"In your culture, you have not yet discovered the rights of equality?" the man asks.

"What?" Jack asks.

"The ability of men to bear young, it has not known among your people?" the man presses.

"Ah… no," Jack says, trying not to look shocked.

"How old is your boy?" the man asks.

Jack is grateful for the change in conversation, "Three," he says proudly.


	15. Part 2 Chapter 9

**Sort of spoilers for "Secrets"****,**** although that doesn't happen in this chapter.**

**A Week Later**

Jack has started spending every night that Sam is gone, as well as many those Sam was there for, at their house. That way Ty, has a parent and a grandpa with him every night.

Jack's black ops training allows him to hear the very first sob in the night. His heart practically breaks at the sound.

He gets up, and goes to his son's room. "What's wrong, bud?"

"I'm sorry, Daddy," Ty asks, looking just a little bit terrified.

"Honey, it's ok. Just tell me what happened," Jack says, moving closer to the boy.

"I was sick," the kid says.

"Did you throw up?" Jack asks, looking around.

"No, but that's why it happened, I was sick," Ty says.

And then Jack sees that the bed is wet. "It's ok, bud." He reaches up his hand to feel his son's forehead. Ty flinches.

Jack has a sharp intake of breath. "Honey, I'm not mad at you. And I would never hit you. I was just trying to find out if you had a fever."

Ty nods, and Jack lifts his hand up to the boy's forehead again. "You do feel warm. Next time something like this happens, you wake mommy or grandpa or I up, ok? Ty, can you take you clothes off, and go wait in the bathroom? I'll get you some medicine, and then you can take a bath to get cleaned up."

-0-0-0-

"Daddy, don't leave me," Ty says, stretching out his hand desperately to his father from his spot on Sam's bed. After he had a bath and some fresh clothes, Jack had put him on the clean bed.

"Ty, it's ok, I'm just going to put the bedding in the laundry, and then we'll take your temp," Jack says soothingly.

"Daddy, I don't feel good," Ty whines.

"I know sweetie, can you tell me exactly what is wrong?" Jack asks, sitting down next to his son.

"I just feel all… sick," the kid whines.

"Does your stomach hurt, or your head, or anything?" Jack asks.

Ty shakes his head.

"Ok, I'll be right back," he assures his son.

-0-0-0-

"Daddy," Ty whimpers, almost asleep. Jack can feel his son's flesh, nearly on fire against his own. Jack adjusts the cold wet washcloth as Ty moves. Then Ty starts shaking with chills.

"Daddy, cold," he shivers.

"I'll be right back," Jack says, pulling a blanket over his son. He knows that probably isn't the best idea for a kid with a fever, but he doesn't really care right now. His son isn't comfortable, and he needs to fix that.

"Jacob," Jack says, knocking on the man's door.

There is a shuffling inside before the man comes to the door, "What's wrong, Jack?"

"Ty's sick. I'm sorry to wake you, I'm probably worrying about nothing. But how high does a temperature have to be before you take a kid to the emergency room?" Jack asks.

Jacob practically runs into Ty's room. He's confused to see it empty, void of even sheets on the bedding. "He's in Sam's room."

Jacob nods, and enters the room. He looks at his grandson shivering under the blankets. "Did you take his temperature?"

"103."

"Any other symptoms?" Jacob asks.

"He, ah… wet the bed, but he said that nothing hurt," Jack says.

"He's going to be all right," Jacob says, breathing a little sigh of relief himself. "We'll just have to keep an eye on the fever, and make sure that it doesn't go any higher. And we should get those blankets off him. That's only going to heat him up even more."

"I know, I just didn't have the heart. He said he's cold," Jack explains.

"Buddy," Jacob says softly, "Buddy, we've got to come out of the blankets. It will make you feel better."

"Sorry, Grandpa," Ty says, allowing his grandpa to lift him out of the blankets.

"He, ah… thought he was going to get in trouble for earlier," Jack explains.

"Oh, baby," Jacob says with something catching in his throat. "I'll go fix your bed up, and get you back to bed."

"I want to stay with Daddy," Ty whines.

"That's fine, Buddy," Jack says, laying down and allowing the boy to wrap himself around him.

"Do either of you need anything before I go back to bed?" Jacob asks.

"No, sorry I woke you," Jack says a bit bashfully.

"No problem, Jack. You did the right thing, you had to make sure that our boy was fine," Jacob says.

**The Next Day**

"Jack, you don't have a mission tomorrow, do you?" Jacob asks him when Sam goes upstairs to give Ty a bath.

"No, and I don't have too much to do at work, so I'll probably be home around four, four-thirty, why?" Jack asks.

"Ah… I was wondering if you could watch Ty for an hour over noon," Jacob looks up hopefully.

"Sure, Jake, any time," Jack says. He looks at the man who is going to be his father in law, and detects there some worry that he doesn't understand. "Any particular reason?"

"Just an appointment," Jacob says, going off to bed.

**The Next Day**

The next day, Jacob doesn't mention anything about where he has been, even though he has plenty of opportunity, Sam isn't around. But when Jack leaves Ty's room at the end of the night, he sees Jacob standing in the hall.

"Jack, could you take Ty to the base daycare tomorrow?" Jacob asks, not looking at the younger man.

"Daycare?" Jack says.

"And I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention this to Sam," Jack says softly.

"Jacob, you've given a lot of your life to this kid. I don't begrudge you days off, but I feel like there is something going on here. Are you ok?"

Jacob sighs, "Why don't we go sit down?"

They sit in the living room for a long moment of silence before Jacob says, "I'd appreciate it if you didn't share any of this with my daughter."

Jack nods.

"I have some doctor's appointments. I don't know much right now. I'm getting more testing tomorrow," Jacob says.

Jack swallows hard. "What is it?"

"Cancer, Jack, they're saying cancer, but I don't yet know what kind," Jacob says.

"Oh, God, Dad," Jack says. The 'dad' is a slip of the tongue that hasn't passed Jack's lips in four decades. "I think Ty should start going to day care every day."

"Jack, I love my grandson. I want to spend time with him even more than I did before. I just need for him to go to day care every now and again when I have an appointment," Jacob says.

"Ok, but if you're ever feeling tired or sick…" Jack says.

Jacob nods his head by way of consent.

"And I'll vouch you on base any time you need to drop him off in the middle of the day. If I'm off… out of the country, you can ask Hammond to do it if you don't want Sam to know." Jack pauses, "Why exactly don't you want Sam to know?"

Jacob pauses, not having really considered the reason for this himself. When he answers it is nearly in the form of a whisper. "Because… you want to protect your kids from pain," Jacob says simply.

**The Next Day**

"Mommy, look what Emma gave me!" Ty proclaims, holding up his arm for his mother to see the friendship bracelet which is adorning his wrist.

"That's beautiful, honey. Who is Emma?" Sam replies.

Ty's eyes get big, "Oopsy!" he says before running off.

Sam's stomach turns with a thousand imaginary worries, "Ty!" she calls, running after him. When she catches up with him, his head is under his bed, ostrich-style with his tiny bum in the air.

She sticks her head under the bed with him, too, "Sweetie, you should never keep secrets from your Mommy."

"But Daddy said I could have ice cream if I didn't tell," Ty protests.

Now Sam has a whole new crop of fears. Is Jack cheating on her? "I'll give you an ice cream if you tell me what Daddy was doing with Emma."

"Daddy didn't even meet her. Her daddy picked her up before Daddy came to get me," Ty says.

And then Sam remembers, "Emma is your friend from daycare?"

Ty nods his head, "Can I have ice cream now?"

Sam nods her head as they slide out from under the beds, and make their way to the living room, "Sweetie, have you gone to daycare every day you're not with Mommy?"

"No, just once," Ty says.

The anger that Sam had been feeling quickly dissipates.

"Did Daddy tell you why you were going to day care?" she asks.

"So I can get ice cream," the kid says in a tone of voice that clearly implies he thinks his mother is more than a little bit dense.

After Jack comes home, Sam waits all afternoon thinking that Jack is going to bring up the reason he left his kid at day care. Neither Jack nor her father are in a particularly talkative mood. But by the time they get into bed, he still hasn't brought it up.

Hey, it's just once. He'll tell her if it's really important.

**One Week Later**

Jack jumps out of bed, and dashes for the bathroom. It's already occupied by Jacob Carter, and by the sounds of it he's doing exactly what Jack needs to do. Jack pulls the trash can over to him just in time.

As Jacob stops retching, he says, "I haven't had a puke pal since the Academy. Are you ok, Jack?"

"I should be asking you that, Jacob," Jack says softly, looking at the older man. Jacob has been doing doses of both chemo and radiation for the last couple of days, and this is not the first time Jack's helped him through his sickness. Honestly, Jack can't figure out how Sam hasn't figured it out yet.

"I'm fine," Jacob says, but the way he's leaning against the wall obviously turns his words into a lie.

Jack stands up, and wets a cold wash cloth which he places on the older man's neck, "Is there anything I can do?"

Jacob shakes his head.

Sam walks into the bathroom to see the two men sitting on the floor. "What happened?" she asks. Then she sees the evidence in the trash can.

"Which one of you was sick?" she asks.

"Me," Jack says. And it's not a lie, he was the one who was sick in the trash can.

"Come on, Jack, let's get you back to bed. I'll call work to tell them that you can't come into work today," Sam says.

"No, I'm fine," Jack says. He's taken off several hours of work in the past few days to be with Jacob during his treatments. He doesn't want to miss any more time, he might need more time off before Jacob's sickness is over.

"I think that might be a good plan," Jacob says.

Then Jack remembers that Jacob has an appointment today, and besides, it looks like Jacob is going to be too sick to take care of a kid.

"Mommy?" a little voice says.

Sam looks between the trash can and the kid. "I've got him," Jack says.

"No, I don't want you to get him sick. Can you, dad?" Sam asks.

And then Jack knows why Sam doesn't know yet. Jacob pulls himself off the floor, and looks like he is really fine, "Of course."

-0-0-0-

"No, I'll be coming into work day, its Colonel O'Neill that is going to be gone," Sam informs the officer on the phone.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but Colonel O'Neill already asked for the morning off. He's been asking for either the morning or the afternoon off quite often for weeks now."

"Ok, well, he won't be coming in this afternoon," Sam says, puzzled by this conversation.

She stares at the phone after she hangs it up.

"Mommy, Daddy is helping Grandpa, are you going to take me to day care?" Tyler asks.

"I'm going to go talk to Daddy, can you watch TV?" she asks.

"I don't want to," Ty says stubbornly.

"Why not?" Sam says in surprise.

"'Cause the only time I get to watch TV without asking is when Daddy is in trouble," Ty says looking sad.

Sam smiles, "He's not in trouble this time. He's just sick."

"'Kay, you make him feel better?" Ty asks.

Sam smiles although she doesn't really have that intention in her mind at that particular moment. She heads up the stairs.

-0-0-0-

"Sir, several of your teammates have complained about, ah… strange symptoms that I think might be related to a recent mission. Have you been experiencing anything unusual?" Janet is at that moment asking Jack on his cell phone.

"We haven't really been on any recent missions. The last one was a couple of weeks ago. But I did throw up this morning," Jack says.

There is such a long pause on the phone that Jack asks, "Ah, doc, are you still there?"

"Yes I am Jack, I think you'd better come in right away," she says.

"I'm sure it's just the stomach flu or something," Jack defends quickly, "Is it the same thing the other guys have?"

"No, actually it's not, and that's kind of the problem, sir. Look, this is really not the sort of thing I can explain over an unsecured line. Actually, I'm going to have quite a bit of trouble explaining it to you when you're right in front of me."

Jack closes his eyes, "How bad is this? Because I've been around someone whose immune system is compromised by chemo and radiation." He is never going to forgive himself if he ended up putting Jacob at greater risk.

"Don't worry, sir, this doesn't appear to be contagious."

-0-0-0-

"So, I called work for you," she says.

"Yeah," he says, searching her face, obviously trying to figure out if his secret has been revealed yet.

"Yeah, they mentioned that you have been gone quite a bit lately. Tyler mentioned that he's been in daycare, too. Jack, I didn't go looking for you. Ty and me, we were fine before. You don't have to take care of him if you don't want to, what pisses me off is that you are lying about it. Jack, if you want out of this relationship, just man up and say it!" Sam meant to get through the whole speech without tears, but she failed in this task.

He takes her into his arms, "Sam, that is not what is going on."

She pushes him away, "I need an explanation!"

"Ok, look, I've been helping someone out. This person asked me not to tell anyone what was going on in their lives, and I've been respecting their wishes. Ty has not been in daycare that much, and never when I was at home. He's actually gotten more time with me, because of the time I've been taking off work. And the daycare has cameras on it 24/7, Samantha. Your father or I have watched any time your son has been there in fast-forward."

Sam looks up at him, "Ok, and you'd tell me if you could?"

He nods, "I promise. Turns out I need to go into work though. My team is sick in the infirmary. It's not contagious, but they want to check me out. I'm going to drop Ty of in daycare on the way."

"Dad can take care of him," Sam says with ease.

Jack tries to think of a response, but in the silence, Sam realizes the truth. She nearly collapses, and Jack catches her once again in his strong hands.

"What's wrong with him? What does he have?" she pleads desperately.

"Samantha, he asked me not to tell you."

"I don't care! He's my dad, and he's sick!" Sam practically shouts.

Jacob walks into the room, and when her eyes turns to him, she can't believe he didn't notice her father was sick.

"Cancer, Sammy," he says.

"Oh, God, Dad," she moans as she walks over to take him into her arms.

"Sammy, it's not over. I'm fighting his thing," he says.

"Sam, now that you know, Jacob has a treatment today…" Jack begins.

"Jack, I've already told you that I don't need someone to babysit me at those appointments. All I have to do is sit there," Jacob protests.

"I've got him and Ty, I'll see you later," Sam says, giving Jack a quick kiss.

**Note: Jacob's illness appears sooner ****than ****in the series. That's because the way I'm going to save Jacob Carter in this series is by early diagnosis, chemo and radiation. I don't know how early it was caught in the series. But in this story they find it much earlier, which can sometimes make all the difference in the world.**


	16. Part 2 Chapter 10

Daniel's voice greets Jack right when he gets off the elevator. "Where is my freaking heating pad?"

Jack hears Daniel's voice again as he nears the infirmary, "My God, this is the worst pain I have ever endured!"

"It is not," Teal'c says.

"Actually I think it is," Ferretti argues.

"When exactly have you experienced worse pain than this?" Daniel asks Teal'c incredulously.

There is a long pause, and Jack has to stop just outside of the infirmary or interrupt something that he is guessing is going to be pretty funny.

"I have experienced pain worse than this on 216 occasions," Teal'c replies.

"Two hundred and sixteen times?" Feretti asks.

"Indeed."

"You're telling me that 216 times you've felt pain that is worse than a badger burrowing its way out of your entrails?" Daniel asks.

"Indeed," Teal'c replies.

Ok, Jack finds himself hoping that was not literal. He rounds the corner, and is greeted by something he never thought he'd see. His team is watching a chick flick. Hey, are there people standing on the Empire state building? That looks like something Sam would really enjoy, he thinks to himself. It's like that affair movie she made him watch. They all have heating pads spread across their stomach, and Daniel has a kleenex bawled up in one hand, and a bag of Hershey's Kisses in the other.

What kind of illness is this?

"Jack, oh my gosh, have a chocolate. I didn't believe they would actually help, I thought girls made that crap up. But it works! Thank God Janet has them on hand," Daniel says, holding the bag out to him.

"What exactly is going on here?" Jack asks.

"Those damn people on P3-Menstrual-X gave us periods," Ferretti informs him.

Suddenly Jack's eyes go wide, and he takes a few steps back.

"It is nothing to worry about, O'Neill, General Hammond authorized a mission through the gate to figure out how to reverse the process. Meanwhile, Doctor Fraiser has provided us with means by which to counteract the effects of the shedding of the lining of the uterus," Teal'c says.

"I do not have a uterus!" Daniel protests.

"The scan conducted by Doctor Fraiser proves otherwise, Doctor Jackson," Teal'c says while adjusting his heating pad. Yep, even the great Teal'c was brought down my Auntie Flo.

"Jack, the good doc's got stuff stronger than chocolate. Did you know they made pills just for this?" Feretti says in awe. "Hey, doc, we need some more of those sweet pills you gave us."

"Honestly boys, I have never experienced such whining!" Janet begins before she turns around. As soon as her eyes catch on Jack's she knows he's freaking out.

"Just exactly how FUNTIONAL are these extra freaking body parts?" Jack bellows.

"I'm not sure. I'll know a lot more if you'll just come with me," Janet says calmly.

Jack takes a few steps toward the door.

"Sir, where are you going?" Janet asks.

"I'm going to go kick the ass of the people who messed with my body and got me PREGNANT!" he screams.

The entire infirmary turn to stare at him.

"We don't know that you are, sir. For all we know, they never gave the stuff to you, or you're going to start… experiencing symptoms tomorrow. The nausea could just be a coincidence."

"How? I mean… where did the egg come from, for crying out loud?" he protests.

"I don't know. Sir, I don't understand the biology of what we are dealing with any more than you do. If you could just calm yourself down, I could do the scan that would give us the beginning of some answers," Janet says.

"He's pregnant?" Daniel asks. "I really need to stop complaining."

"But you won't," Janet points out.

-0-0-0-

Jack is relieved as he looks at the monitor, which he thinks is blank. "All right, so maybe I didn't get the symptoms because my brand new lady business is defective, or hey, maybe it's age, right? I'm probably too old to deal what the boys in there are dealing with."

"Sir," Janet says, using her finger to point to a tiny dot on the screen, "That right there… is your baby."

"No," Jack informs her.

"Sir," she says, looking at him.

"Is it Sam's?" Jack asks.

"Again, I don't really know how this works. Hopefully when the team that the General sent out comes back we will have a few more answers.

"It's got to be, I mean, the way they talked when we were there, it sounded as if the babies were both the mother's and the father's. They wouldn't go through all of this just to have a baby that was pretty much a clone, would they?"

She shrugs.

"Well, is it healthy? I mean… it can't just stay in there and grow, can it?" Jack asks.

"Sir, from what I saw of the other boys, the system does seem to be entirely functional. Apart from the birth part, with which you would need some help, of course. But it appears that you now have two entirely functional reproductive systems. I would like to do some more tests. A blood test to make sure that your hormone levels are what they should be for a pregnant woman. Otherwise, we might have to use supplements. I'd also like to do an amniocentesis when you are another two or so months along. That will tell us what DNA the kid has. It will even tell us who supplied the egg, because of mitochondrial DNA."

"Whatever you need, doc," Jack says with a stunned expression on his face.

Janet pats his arm softly, "Do you want me to call Sam in?"

Jack glances at the wall behind her head. There is only 30 minutes until Jacob has his treatment. Now she's probably ½ mile above his head dropping off their kid at day care. If he called her she would be here in a matter of minutes. But he couldn't do that to Jacob. Jacob really needed his daughter with him right now.

He shakes his head.

Janet draws his blood. "The baby looks healthy. You're about a month along."

"Ah… no, the planet was only two weeks ago."

"Well, the age of the fetus is measured from date of last period, not from conception, it's weird, but…" Janet begins.

"In that case Doc, I'm fifty years along."

Janet smiles.

"You really think I can do this?" Jack asks.

"Do you mean physically or emotionally, sir?" Janet asks.

Jack glares at her.

"Well, you're doing much better with your pregnancy than they're doing with their period, so you'll be fine."

"I don't know, Teal'c was pretty stoic," Jack says.

"You weren't here when he arrived. He was the first one to figure out something was wrong. You should have seen him trying to describe his symptoms."

"Big words?" Jack guesses.

"Took me about five minutes to figure out where exactly he was bleeding from, yeah."

"And then I bet menstruation wasn't exactly your first thought."

Janet laughs, "Not exactly. And about that time Daniel-the-whiner joined the crew. If you want to go out in the main room, I'll come and get you when we get the results or hear anything from the team that went out to investigate."

Jack obeys the chief medical officer's orders, even though he doesn't exactly relish the thought of going to sit down next to his men. When he does they are silent for a few seconds before Ferretti says, "Geeze, I thought I was dying when I woke up this morning bleeding. But suddenly I'm grateful for this stupid thing."

Daniel gives him a smack on the shoulder. But then, like Job's comforters, Daniel finds that he can't be silent, "I'm not sure I exactly understand the process…" he begins.

"Join the club," Jack retorts.

Jack has the sudden urge to fan his hand over his stomach. To create some connection to this thing… this baby that is growing within him. He resists the urge, though, because it's pretty hard to pretend that something isn't real after you've started bonding with it.

-0-0-0-

Sam was surprised by her Dad's chemo. She had somehow expected something more dramatic. Something more painful or sad. It was just like a blood drive, except that it took longer, and that the people had a much less healthful look to them.

She's exhausted by the time that she gets home, even though it is only three in the afternoon. Jack left a message on her phone that informed her that he'd picked up Ty. After she gets her father settled into his bedroom she starts the search for her other two boys.

She finds the two of them in her bed watching an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. It's just not the Schwarzenegger movie she'd expected to see her macho husband watching. "Is this 'Junior'?" she asks.

"Yep," Jack replies.

"Go play in your room, bud," she instructs her son, "And our son is watching this why?" Sam presses.

"We've got to get him used to the idea some way," Jack replies.

"What idea?" Sam asks confused.

"Men having babies. Turns out the doc wanted me to come to the infirmary, because all my men had their periods. But honey… I'm late," he says with something that is supposed to be levity.

She stares at him for a moment, and then starts laughing, "You just about had me, Jack. Thanks for trying to cheer me up with everything that's happening to my dad, but really, you went a bit too far."

"Samantha," he says, looking in her eyes.

She flops down on the bed next to him, "You're not kidding, you're really pregnant?"

"Yeah, it's that damn planet we were on a few weeks back," he mutters.

"I have so many questions," Sam says slowly.

"I have an off-world doctor's appointment tomorrow that might answer some, if you want to come."

"Are you safe?" she asks.

"Yeah, Hammond sent some people through to talk to the nice people who did this to me. Apparently, men on that planet have been having babies for fifty-some years."

"And the kid? I mean, it's going to be all right in there?" she asks, staring at his stomach.

Jack nods his head.

"Wow," she says.

"Yeah," he repeats, letting out a breath of air. "Sam, I'm a pregnant man, what the hell are we going to do?" Jack asks with panic in his eyes.

"Well, sweetie, I'm guessing that that the word has already got out at the SGC, so that's something. For people who don't have clearance, I'll get one of those pregnancy sympathizers, and complain about my feet. And then we'll tease you for gaining some sympathy weight. Luckily, the way men gain weight isn't that different from a pregnancy, women are different," she says thoughtfully.

He closes his eyes, "What about your father, and Ty?"

"Well, Ty wouldn't be that much of a problem. He's good at keeping secrets, and if he did blurt it out, people would think he just misunderstood a joke."

"But we can't tell him unless we tell your father," Jack says gently.

"I know," she whispers.

"He probably has enough to worry about right now."

"Jack dad's going to be excited about having another grandbaby," Sam says, looking directly into his eyes.

"You mean he's going to be excited that his daughter had two kids before she got married?" Jack asks incredulously.

Sam reaches over and puts her hand to his stomach. She only feels her husband's taunt six pack. "I seriously can't believe there is a baby in there."

"You're telling me," he whispers. And then there eyes meet, and they laugh hysterically about their situation.


	17. Part 2 Chapter 11

**The Next Day**

"Daddy, can Emma come over to our house today?" Ty asks, bouncing as his father picks him up from day care.

"My daddy said I could anytime!" a girl in a very fluffy pink princess dress says, bounding before Jack.

"How about we call him up, and see if you can come today? Who is he?" Jack asks, squatting down before the little girl.

"Henry Boyd," she says.

"Major Boyd?" Jack asks with a smile.

Emma nods.

"He's a good man," Jack says.

"I know," she says with a smile.

"I can ring him up for you, sir," the day care worker says.

"I'd appreciate that, thanks," Jack says.

-0-0-0-

"And this is my Grandpa," Ty says, continuing the tour.

"What is a Grandpa?" Emma asks.

"Well," Ty explains, "He takes care of me when Mommy and Daddy aren't here. And he's really good at stories and pancakes."

"Oh, so a grandpa is kind of like a nanny," Emma says, nodding her head, "I have a nanny, she takes care of me when Daddy goes to outer space."

"Doesn't your Mommy do that?" Ty asks completely missing the classified part of her statement. Jacob just figures it's some childish hyperbole for flying a plane.

"'Member, I don't have a Mommy just like you don't useta have a Daddy."

"Right, I forgetted," Ty says.

Jacob smiles sadly at the little girl and pulls her onto his lap, "Would you a story?"

"I get to sit on his lap," Ty says rather jealously.

"I've got two knees, little one," his grandfather says sympathetically.

**The Next Day**

Janet comes out of her office, and almost slams straight into Daniel Jackson. Daniel Jackson carrying a giant basket.

"Ah, this is probably inappropriate…" he mutters with a flush coming over his cheeks as he hands it to her.

She looks down at the basket and sees just about every kind of chocolate confection known to man. There are some movies in there, and a bottle of Midol. And… oh my gosh, a box of tampons.

"Dr. Jackson, did you make me a period basket?" she asks with a grin in her voice.

His face is now an intense color of bright red, "It's just… I didn't realize how much they sucked before. And you were so nice to us that I figured you deserved something. I mean, you go through it all the time, and don't lay down in the infirmary and whine every month."

"Well, I have to admit that I want to sometimes," Janet admits.

Daniel walks away and then turns back, "Ah… chick flicks," he blurts.

"Yeah," Janet says slowly, not sure where this is going.

"You want to go to one?" Daniel asks. Daniel has never really had friends, and much less has he dated. Sara occasionally dragged him away from his work to dinner or a movie, but it had always been her initiating it. With Sha're, he had just found himself suddenly married. Daniel isn't sure if he wants friendship or dating right now, but he figures it can start with a movie.

Sha're told him that he was supposed to be happy after her. He didn't think it was going to be possible. But maybe it is. And maybe Janet deserves happiness just as much as he does.

Janet Fraizer cannot imagine what just happened. The delectable Doctor Jackson just asked her on a date. "Yeah." Or maybe it wasn't a date, she scolds herself. Maybe they were just friends. He did just lose his wife a couple of months ago, and with the hormones still coursing through his body (though they were fading now that the people of the planet had given him a cure), they could just about qualify as girlfriends.

Daniel pulls himself into a self-hug. "When is your shift done?"

"Seven."

"See ya then?" he asks.

"Yeah," she says. She watches him walk away, and detect a slight bounce in the step she has never noticed before.

-0-0-0-

"Seriously? That is your car?" Janet asks, staring at the car before her incredulously.

"It's fine," Daniel points out with a slight pout. Janet decides that a pouting Daniel Jackson is even more amazing than a Daniel absorbed in an artifact, her previously favorite form of the man.

"You save the world on a regular basis, don't they pay you?" Janet asks as she sits down in his clunker.

"I do not save the world on a regular basis," Daniel protests as he buckles his seat belt.

"You pretty much single handedly opened the Stargate," Janet continues.

"That is an exaggeration," Daniel protests. He puts the car in reverse, and puts his hand absently on the passenger seat as he turns to look behind him before backing up. It's an action he's done ever since learning to drive, when he was eighteen. And he has no notice of the fact that this action almost leaves Janet breathless as his fingers make brief contact with her shoulder. "If you want to talk about people who save the world, let's start with you. I mean, how many times have you identified and cured some alien contagion that could take down the world? More often than not, some contagion that I had a hand in brining through the gate."

Janet stares at him for a long moment, "Is it really possible that you have no idea how amazing you are?"

He blushes.

"I should also tell you that the basket was unnecessary. It turns out you are not the member of SG-1 that has the most trouble coping with temporarily having female organs. That honor would go to Teal'c. He punched out three marines today," she informs him.

"What did they say?" Daniel asks giggling.

"I have no idea. He wouldn't say, and the marines were not about to repeat it, but I can pretty much guarantee you it was some sort of a crack about his extra equipment." She stares at him for a little bit before continuing, "Daniel, I find that I know very little about you. I mean, besides what happens to you in the mountain. What do you do outside the mountain?" she asks.

"Sleep."

Janet laughs, "Well, I take that to mean that you almost never leave the mountain, because as your doctor I know that you don't do very much of that."

"I am a bit of a workaholic," Daniel says with a touch of bitterness in his tone.

"And yet, you're not working now," Janet says softly.

"No, I'm not," Daniel says, and his voice clearly shows that he is puzzled by his own actions.

"Where are you from, Daniel?" Janet asks.

"That question has a really long answer," Daniel warns.

"We've got time," Janet says with a smile.

"I was born in Greece. I lived in Iraq, Italy, and Egypt. I had some brief trips to the States, but I've been America bound ever since I turned eight; well, except for Abydos. I lived in just about every place in New York State. I went to a community college there for a couple of years, and then I did the rest of my schooling in Chicago. Then I ended up here."

"Doctor Jackson, are you an army brat?" Janet asks, surprised.

Daniel swallows hard, "My dad was an anthropologist, and my mom was a linguist."

"How did they settle on New York?" she asks.

There is a long moment of silence, "Death."

"Oh God, I'm so sorry," she says, clasping her hand over her mouth, "I should have read your file!"

"Don't apologize for not being a stalker, Janet, you couldn't have known," he says quietly.

She puts her hand gently on his arm. "I'm sorry," and now it's not an apology but sympathy. "It's hard to move around a lot. At least that's why my ex kept trying to tell me after I joined the Air Force."

Daniel's head whips around so fast that Janet is more than a little surprised he doesn't get whiplash. "You were married?" he squeaks with surprise and alarm.

"It was four years ago. It is very much over."

"What happened?" he asks softly. Then he rushes on, "I mean, you don't have to tell me, I'm being noisy."

"It's ok, Daniel, he was… really controlling. After we got married, I said I wanted to have kids. He informed me that we weren't going to have them. It wasn't even about the kids, you know. It was about the fact that I had no say in whether or not we were going to have them. He just informed me it wasn't happening. I'd say that was the beginning of the end."

Daniel doesn't acknowledge her sharing, and after a really long moment of silence, she changes the topic. But no matter what topic she tries to engage him in, she doesn't get much of a response.

Janet sighs. Well, if he's going to get like that just because she's divorced, he isn't worth her time. What hypocrisy! I mean, the man's wife had only died a few months ago, and he was already on a… was it a date?

Daniel glances over at her, just once, with a little sadness. Maybe they would have been great together. But it doesn't really matter. Because he can't give her kids. And if she left her husband for that, what chance do they have at the future?

-0-0-0-

"I do not understand why you are not overjoyed by this blessed event," the mayor says as soon as they walk through the Stargate.

"This is my wife, Samantha," Jack says by way of introduction, and avoidance.

The stout man turns to her, "Did you not wish to have another child?"

"We did, we just were not expecting it yet. And when we did we expected to have it in the usual way," Sam says.

"I don't understand. Most women are delighted to let their husbands do part of the child-bearing. Is it not a lot of inconvenience and pain?" the major asks.

"Yes, but it's a little hard to explain in our world. We just don't have the technology," Sam protests.

"But childbirth this way is painless. When the time comes, the top of the artificial womb simply disintegrates," the major explains.

"Sweet, no C-section," Jack interjects.

"Painless? Are you kidding me?" Sam pouts. "Let me assure you, Jack, Ty's birth was anything but painless."

"Look, we're a little concerned about the process, about how safe it is for the baby," Jack says.

"And Jack," Sam adds.

"I assure you, it is safer than childbirth the normal way. The hormones and the artificial womb are more closely regulated. With male pregnancies, it is almost impossible to have a miscarriage unless the fetus is non-viable," the mayor says.

"You're kidding?" Sam says, looking at him.

"We have some questions about how exactly this… works," Jack says.

"Well, you can refer the more technical questions to the doctor. If you have any questions about the experience of male pregnancy, I would be the person to ask," the major says.

-0-0-0-

"Everything looks to be developing naturally. His hormone levels are as they should be. The baby is the appropriate size. I'm going to give you something for the nausea," the alien doctor says.

"Hold it, you have a cure for morning sickness?" Sam asks.

The doctor nods.

Sam turns to Jack, "If we have another kid, I am so coming here for pre-natal care."

"Ah, this kid is Sam's, right?" Jack asks.

"Oh, there is a question of maternity? You've been with women other than your wife?" the doctor says in surprise.

"God, no!" Jack exclaims. "I just don't understand how exactly… what parts came from who?"

The doctor smiles, "We call it male pregnancy, but that isn't technically accurate. Eggs must be produced before birth, and males simply don't do that."

"You don't say," Jack says sarcastically.

Sam gives him a hard elbow in the side. She doesn't want him to insult the man with answers.

"The medicine that we gave you causes a hormonal change in any women who comes into intimate contact with the man. They release an egg which is fertilized by his sperm, and absorbed by his new reproductive system during the sexual act. The child then develops there," the doctor explains.

"Like a sea horse," Sam says.

Jack stares at her.

"The female seahorse lays eggs in a pouch in the male sea horse's belly. The eggs develop there, and after the hatch they come out," she adds.

"We have a creature like that on our planet, although it is a mammal. That is where our scientists got the idea from. For many years, we implanted the eggs in the belly of the male. It is only within the last few decades that we discovered a method for it to happen more naturally. People like their babies to be born out of love, and not in a laboratory," the doctor explains.

Sam grabs Jack's hand at the word 'love'.

"Can we continue to come here for appointments? No-one on Earth is familiar with male pregnancies," Jack asks.

"Of course, you can schedule your next one at the front desk," the doctor says.

"Huh, just when you think you aren't in Kansas anymore, it turns out that you are."

**A Week Later**

"Sam, you know that I have a cabin in Minnesota, right?" Jack asked one night.

"Yeah, you talked about it a lot when you were in Iraq. It's always kind of been your 'real' home, hasn't it?"

"Yeah, when mom left dad, we ran out of money in this small town in Minnesota. This couple let us stay at this cabin they rented out. We couldn't pay for the first couple of months. It took mom years to pay them back for that. They died when I was at college, and they left it to me. They were the closest things I've ever had to grandparents," Jack says.

"Does your mom still live there?" Sam asks.

"No, it's way out in the country. Mom doesn't like to drive that much anymore, so she got a little apartment in town. But she still lives in the same town," Jack confesses.

"That's nice," Sam says.

"Would you ever want to go to my cabin?" Jack asks, looking incredibly self-conscious.

"Sure, I'd love to someday."

"How about next weekend?" Jack blurts.

"Next weekend? Isn't that kind of sudden? I mean, we'd have to look into getting time off of work, and I'd have to see if my dad could babysit. There is a lot of prep work that I would have to do," she says.

"Ah… Hammond gave us a go, and I was thinking of taking Dad and Ty along. Not that I wouldn't love to have a romantic weekend get away with you, but the cabin is kind of a family thing," Jack stammers.

"Wow, you did all the thinking for me," Sam says in a voice that is pretty ambiguous.

"It wasn't like I was making decisions for you. If you don't want to do it, we're not going. I was just…" Jack begins to defend himself.

"Jack, its fine. I'm just not used to other people… taking care of details for me. I've been a single mom, doing all the planning. I mean, dad helped out with the practical stuff, but…"

"Decisions have always been all you," Jack says.

"It's nice to have someone to share with," Sam says, leaning her head against him.

"So this is a 'yes' on cabin?" he asks.

She nods his head against her shoulder.

**One Week Later**

"Daddy, do we have to kill the worms?" Ty says, hiding his face in his father's shoulder to avoid seeing the worms wiggling around in a Styrofoam cup.

"That's part of fishing, little man," Jack says, "I'll put the worm on the hook for you."

Sam looks at her son, who looks like he's about ready to cry, "Jack, don't they make artificial worms?"

"Sure, but they don't work as well," Jack admits.

"Jack," Sam says in a way that draws his eyes to the little boy beside him.

"Right, it doesn't really matter if we catch anything or not. Why don't you go free the worms, little man?" Jack says, handing his son the cup. The kid runs over and dumps them in the dirt.

Mrs. O'Neill laughs, "I'm beginning to hope we don't catch anything. If he has that kind of a reaction to the worms, I can't imagine what he would do if we actually caught a fish."

Sam giggles, "Dad, how come you never took us fishing as kids?" she asks, turning to Jacob.

"You had a bad reaction to it," he says.

"No way, I never had a problem with dissecting animals in high school. I don't know why it would have been any different with fish," she protests.

Jacob laughs, "That's not what you had a reaction to. You were five. Mark was three. You had gone fishing with me several times, and not caught anything. Then the first time that Mark went fishing with me, he put his line in, and caught a huge fish. And that is when you melted down."

"I did not," Sam protests.

"Oh, you did," Jacob says with another laugh, "Mark felt so sorry for you that he tried to put the fish on your line."

"Note to self, never beat Carter at anything," Jack says.

"Shouldn't be a problem for you, Jack," Jacob teases.

Tyler runs back, "All the worms squirmed safe into the ground," he announces.

"Good, than we can get started fishing," Jack says.

-0-0-0-

"Well, I think that's about it for fishing today, we should get ready for supper," Mrs. O'Neill says.

"But Daddy, you said we could have fish for supper. But we haven't caught any fish," Ty whined.

"Huh, you're ok with killing fish, but not worms?" Jack asks confused.

"Wait, I caught something!" Sam exclaims, reeling it in hard, "Ty, come here and help me reel it in!"

Ty runs over, and he and his mother work together to land the fish.

"Well, Samantha, that is the biggest fish that's ever been caught in this lake," Jack announces.

"We get to have fish for supper?" Ty asks hopefully.

"Yep," Jack says, "As soon as someone helps me clean it."

"Daddy," Ty laughs, "It was in the water, it's already clean."

"He means cutting it open and taking the good eating parts away from all the gross parts," Jacob explains.

Ty looks at the fish critically. "I think all the parts might be gross," the boy announces.

"How about you and I go into the cabin, and get the rest of supper ready while we leave these guys to the fish?" Mrs. O'Neill asks lifting the boy up.

"Ok, Grandma, I knew you were wise," the boy announces, causing all of the grow-ups to laugh.

"I think I'll go with you guys," Jacob says, following them into the cabin.

"I'll do all the cutting," Jack offers, pulling the hook out of the fish's mouth.

"Jonathan O'Neill, is there anything about me that says squeamish girly-girl to you?" Sam asks.

"Besides the stunning figure? No, not really," he says back, handing her a pocket knife.

She carries the knife and fish over to a picnic table next to the house, "I don't remember ever having done this, so you are going to have to give me some instructions."

"Ok, your first incision should be along the lateral line of symmetry," he instructs.

She blinks at him.

"Right here," Jack says, running his finger along where the cut should go.

"Yeah, I knew what those words meant, I just didn't know that you did," she says with raised eyebrows.

He shrugs.

She shakes her head as she makes he cut, "You know, I've known for quite some time that you're not nearly as dumb as you like people to believe, but now I'm starting to wonder just exactly how smart you are."

"Not very," he teases as she scoops out the guts.

He picks the stomach off the table, "Check the stomach. If we know what the fish likes to eat, we can use better bait next time."

She slices it open, and gasps.

"What? Something cool? When I was a kid I once found a frog inside of one of these babies. Can you imagine? A fish eating a frog?"

"Jack, how?" Sam asks, looking at him.

"What?" Jack says, completely puzzled by her actions.

She draws out the ring. The same ring that Jack had thrown into the pond four years earlier. The ring that, apparently, this fish had swallowed.

"You must have caught this fish, feed him the ring, and then put him in the pond. This is… the most unique proposal ever!" Sam gushes.

Oh, God, proposal? Jack thinks in panic. He plasters a grin on his face. Marry her? Hell yeah, he wants to marry her. He just hadn't expected to. Well, at least now he understands what women feel like when they are proposed to when they aren't expecting it.

"But how could you have known I was going to catch the fish?" Sam asks, confused.

"Samantha, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?" he asks, figuring at some point she's actually going to want words attached to the thing that she believes is a proposal.

She shakes her head.

No? She's saying no? Well, of course she is. It's crazy early for a proposal. Which is why he hadn't actually proposed.

"Jack, you didn't do it on purpose, did you? Is it even your ring?" Sam asks.

"Yeah, it is," he says.

"Ok, how did it get into the fish?" she asks.

Jack debates lying to her. But that doesn't seem like a good way to start a marriage, and he's just realized that he really does want to have a marriage with Sam, and soon.

"I had a buddy buy that for me during desert storm. If you hadn't gotten orders, I would have had them send it to me oversees," Jack admits.

"You were going to propose back then?" she asks.

He nods.

"I would have said yes," she says with absolute certainty.

"Even if you hadn't been pregnant?" he asks.

"Definately," she assures him. "So how did it end up in the lake?"

"I might have… ah, chucked it in there when I thought you were with some other guy," he says.

"You threw an engagement ring in the lake?" she laughs.

He nods.

"Look, I'm sorry about thinking this was a proposal. Can we just forget about the part where I embarrass myself, by saying yes?" she whispers.

"Technically, Samantha, it is a proposal. I did ask you to marry me," he points out.

"Yeah, only because I thought you had already proposed," she says with a laugh.

"Sam, I am unbelievably grateful to this fish. I really want to marry you," he says, looking in her eyes.

"Yeah?" she asks.

"Yeah," he says.

She lets out a soft giggle, before running into the house.

"Was that an answer, Carter?" he calls after her. She doesn't say anything, and so he runs after her.

Sam bursts into the house, and starts washing the ring frantically in the sink.

"What happened, did you cut yourself?" Jacob asks, running over to his daughter at the sink.

As soon as he gets close he sees the ring. "Well, son of a gun!" he exclaims, walking over to Jack and slapping him on the back. "Welcome to the family, son."

Mrs. O'Neill jumps up, and pulls Sam into a hug, "Oh, I'm so happy for you!"

"What is going on?" Ty asks indignantly.

Sam slips the ring onto her finger, and Jack grins at her. "Well, son I just gave your mother a special present. A ring, and when you give someone this kind of a ring it means that you are promising that you are going to marry them. That you love them, and that you are going to stay with them forever."

"That's good," Ty says.

"I think so," Jack says, grinning at Sam over the boys head.

"Daddy, can I have a ring, too?" Ty asks.

Jack laughs. "No, honey."

"Why not?" Ty asks.

"Because boys don't wear engagement rings."

Ty pulls his mother's hand down so he can look at her ring, "But it's pretty, Daddy."

"Yes, it is," Sam says, looking at it, and then meeting Jack's eyes.

"Daddy, don't you want to marry me?" Tyler asks worriedly.

Jack smiles at him, and picks him off the ground, "Honey, fathers don't marry their sons. But I am going to love you forever, and stay forever with you."

"But mom gets a pretty ring to prove you love her," Tyler protests.

"Well, how about I get you something to prove it to. Maybe a new fire truck or a baseball or something," Jack offers.

Ty stares at his father like he is dense, "Those don't sparkle, Daddy."

"No, I don't suppose they do," Jack says in a bemused voice.

"I think we should celebrate the engagement," Jacob interrupts.

Mrs. O'Neill smiles, "I agree. Why don't you and I take Ty out for pizza and ice cream, and then the three of us can have a camp out in the tent tonight?"

"Can we have a campfire with s'mores too?" Ty asks excitedly.

"Of course," Jacob says with a smile.

"You guys don't have to do that," Sam asks blushing.

"I know we don't have to, dear. But this way, you can go out and have a nice date with my son," Mrs. O'Neill says.


	18. Part 2 Chapter 12

"To us," Jack says lifting up a glass in cheers.

Sam lifts her champagne glass filled with juice, and taps it against his. She is drinking the real stuff, partly out of solidarity for her pregnant husband, and partly, because she's pretending to be pregnant herself. But she looks distracted.

"What's wrong?" Jack asks with a knot of worry coiling in his stomach. Did he do something wrong already?

"Why are you so against getting Ty a ring?" she asks, looking at him.

"Because he's three, and I'm not marrying my son," Jack says with a laugh in his voice.

"Jack, he's insecure. He not used to having a father. He probably isn't that confident you are going to stick around."

"He's a kid, Sam. I'll find another way to convince him that I am going to stick around."

"Are you saying no because he's a kid, or because he's a boy?" Sam asks.

"I don't know, a little of both, I suppose. Boys don't wear engagement rings," he says with raised eyebrows.

She leans back in her chair, "Jack, I grew up being told that girls didn't play with astronaut dolls, or make guns out of sticks, or join the air force."

"It's different for boys," Jack says.

"Different, yeah, but not worse. I mean, boys might get teased a little more for playing with dolls or liking jewelry or whatever. But there are fewer jobs their actually scorned for taking. I mean, sure, male nurses and ballerinas get a lot of crap. But a lot of the professional world is closed off to women. There are so many jobs that we're not even supposed to want to have."

"Sam, you don't understand. A boy does a girly thing and he's just not going to be made fun off, he's going to be beat up," Jack protests.

"I know," Sam says, pulling up her t-shirt sleeve up to reveal a scar, "And that is something that I got for being better than the boys at sling shot when I was twelve. That doesn't change the fact that I want my son to grow up in a world where he's allowed to do anything he wants. And he really better be able to grow up in a family where he's able to do anything that he wants."

"Sam, I hear you, but I'm trying to prevent our son from getting hurt here," Jack says quietly.

She stares at him for a few seconds trying to figure out if this is true. But she still sees some fear in his eyes that indicates it's at least partly a lie. "Jack, are you afraid he's gay?"

"Has he said something to you?" Jack asks with concern.

"No, and I don't think he is. But he could be, Jack. Anyone could be. Would you love him any less?"

"No, of course not," Jack says. His voice rings true and easy.

"Ok, then, what can be wrong with him doing something girly?"

He smiles, "Ok, I'll buy my son an engagement ring."

"Thank you," Sam says with a grin as the waitress sets down the food before them.

**A Week Later**

Jack has rarely in his life felt as awkward as he does walking into the jewelry store.

"Can I help you sir?" the women behind the counter asks.

"Yes, what rings do you have that would fit a three year old?" he asks.

She smiles leading him over to a display case, "You're daughter's a lucky girl. Any particular color?"

Jack debates lying to the lady. I mean, what would it matter in the big scheme of things? But that goes against his whole discussion he had with Sam. "Actually, it's for my son. And I don't know, he just requested 'sparkly'."

"Your son?" she says, surprised.

"I just asked his mother to marry me. He felt a little left out," Jack says.

"We have some nice jewelry meant for boys-watches and things. Nothing in his size, but we could order something in if you found something you like."

"It needs to be a ring, a sparkly ring," Jack says.

"Ah… yes, sir, do you have a color in mind?" the woman says, stammering, bringing a tray out of the container.

"This one is nice," he says, pointing to a green ring. He and his son shared a favorite color.

The woman hands it to him, and he puts it on his the first segment of his pinky finger to examine the effects the light had on it.

"This will do," he says smiling at the women. "Can you engrave 'always' on that?"

-0-0-0-

"Mommy what are you getting Daddy for his 'gagement present?" Ty asks.

"Sweetie, it doesn't work that way," Sam says with a smile.

"It sucks to be a boy," he pouts, "You get a ring, and Daddy and I get 'nuffin."

"You're right, Ty, we should get your Daddy a present. And I know the perfect thing."

"Can I help?" Ty asks bouncing.

"Yes, you can. Remember when you asked for a dog last Christmas?"

"You said no," Ty reminds her.

"Well, I'm saying yes now. The only catch is, it has to be the same color as Schrodinger."

-0-0-0-

"Hey, Jacob, where is the little man?" Jack asks.

"They're in the backyard," Jacob says, gesturing Jack inside.

Jack's heart just about leaps out of his chest when he sees his son with a dog sitting on his chest licking his face.

"Surprise," Sam says when he walks through the door.

"What is this?" Jack says, slapping his thighs to call a puppy over.

"This is your puppy, but he likes me, too. Puppies say they like you by licking your face," Tyler informs his father gravely.

"Right now I'm kind of hoping that you weren't kidding about wanting a dog," Sam says bashfully.

"I definitely was not," Jack says with a smile as the puppy squirms in his arms.

"We got you this 'cause it's not fair that girls get nice things for 'gagement, and boys don't," Tyler declares.

"You know what, it isn't. Which is why I got you this," Jack says, handing his son a velvet box.

Tyler opens it up, and his eyes light up, "It's sparkly, Daddy. Thank you!"

"Woah, Jack, I thought you were going to get him a toy. This is too nice for a kid!" Sam protests.

"Tyler is going to take really good care of it, aren't you, son?" Jack asks. Tyler nods gravely, slipping it onto his finger.

"Honestly, Sam, it wasn't that expensive," Jack defends.

The puppy licks Jack's face.

"Daddy?" Tyler says suddenly worried, "Isn't the puppy going to get lonely?"

"No, he's got three adults, a little boy, and a cat to play with," Jack says.

"But he's your dog, I thought he would live at your house," Tyler says, confused.

"Tyler, the puppy is going to stay at your house whenever I do," Jack says.

"Daddy, why do you have two houses?" Tyler asks.

"That, son, is a really good question," Sam says. "One that Daddy and I will talk about later."

Tyler leans forward and whispers in his father's ear, "Pick this house, Daddy. I don't want you to live alone."

"Don't worry about that, son," Jack says, laughing.

-0-0-0-

Later that night, Sam and Jack lay next to each in bed. They have just finished a rather amazing round of lovemaking, and are still tangled together. "So where are we going to live after we get married?"

"I was thinking… together," Jack suggests with a smirk.

She playfully elbows his ribs, careful to avoid the portion of him which contains a baby.

"I practically live here already, Sam. I figured I'd just move my stuff in. Then we can bicker about what furniture we're going to keep," Jack says with a smile.

"This house is pretty small," Sam says.

"And soon there are going to be five of us. Maybe one day there will be even more, eh?"

Sam nods. "Yeah, maybe one more in a couple of years, especially if you're willing to carry it."

"Sorry, love, you're going to be bearing any future children," he says.

"So, new house shopping?" Sam asks.

"Yes."

**Three Days Later**

Jack's eyes are wide open, even though it is the middle of the night. He's been very hungry for the last couple of days. Even though the pills the off-world doctor gave him got rid of the nausea, it still left him feeling kind of odd. Now, he really wants to eat. If only he could figure out exactly what he wants to eat.

Ah, orange juice and ice cream, of course, it's the perfect snack, really. And maybe after that, he'll have eggs. Yeah, eggs covered in ketchup... no, salsa, spicy salsa. He heads into the kitchen to fulfill his cravings. As soon as the eggs are on the stove, he mixes up the orange juice and ice cream.

Just then Jacob walks into the room. He looks at the glass in Jack's hand, and blinks his eyes. "Is that for Sam?" he asks, looking excited.

"No, I was just having a snack. Can I make you something?" Jack asks knowing, that he wasn't the only one who was too sick to eat for the last couple of days.

"Jack, you're trying to tell me you've been sick for days, and then you're drinking that?"

"Yeah, well, believe what you want," Jack says, taking another sip while pouring the salsa on the almost-finished eggs.

"For a second I thought I'd get to see a second grandchild," Jacob says with longing in his voice.

"You will. You'll get to see several grandchildren, and you'll get to see them all grown-up too," Jack says, turning to look at the man.

"That's kind Jack, but…" Jacob begins.

"You're beating this cancer," Jack says firmly.

"You and Sam are planning on having more kids?" Jacob asks as he pulls the milk out of the fridge to pour a glass.

"Yeah, sooner rather than later," Jack says. He doesn't want to tell Jacob anything tonight, Sam needs to be here for the discussion.

"After the wedding, though?" Jacob asks.

Jack takes another sip of his mixture, and then feels the nausea returning. Jacob stares after Jack as he rushes out of the room. Apparently the medicine doesn't always work.

"What the hell is going on?" Jacob mutters to himself.

A**uthors Note: I know the science is funky. Just suspend your disbelief.**


	19. Part 2 Chapter 13

**The Next Day**

"We have to tell him, he already thinks that something is up," Jack protests to Sam the next morning.

"So we tell him that I'm having a baby. From what you told me, he already sort of thinks that anyway," she retorts.

"Sam, he's going to be living with us the whole time that I'm pregnant. He's going to figure out what is going on."

"Jack, he's not going to believe us, if we tell him," Sam says.

"Don't underestimate him," Jack warns.

"Hey, guys, I put the kid in front of some Saturday morning cartoons. I figured we had a discussion coming," Jacob says, knocking on their bedroom door.

"You're right, come on in," Jack says, scooting over on the bed so that Jacob can sit between the two of them.

"Dad, we've got a baby on the way," Sam says.

"I knew it! Congratulations!" Jacob says, giving his daughter a hug.

"Well Jacob, there is a catch. Sam isn't pregnant," Jack says.

Jacob looks between them, confused, "You're adopting?"

Jack bites his lip, "See, I'm the one that's pregnant."

Jacob rolls his eyes.

"Dad, I know that you never bought my cover story," Sam says.

"Right, you got a lot of medals for working in 'deep space radar telemetry', whatever that means. And if that was really your field, you wouldn't be going out of the country as often as you do," Jacob says.

"Well dad, you're right, the cover story is crap. What we really do, it's crazy. And I can't give you any details. But I will tell you that it resulted in Jack being exposed to something that changed his biology in a pretty significant way. A way that allowed him to become pregnant," Sam says.

Jacob shakes his head, "I don't care what kind of secret government experiments you are into, there is nothing out there that can make a man pregnant. It's… more complicated than that."

"Well, these people have been working on this for a very long time, in secret," Jack explains.

"But it's not safe. I mean, even if this was somehow possible, there would be no way to carry the baby to term," Jacob says.

"Long time, dad, apparently it's safer than the natural way," Sam says.

"But you're the first human trial," Jacob protests.

"No, I'm just the first _unwilling_ human trial. They did it to themselves, to each other before," Jack says.

Jacob shakes his head, "I still feel a little like I'm on Candid Camera. And if so, I am really going to look like a fool for believing you."

"Well, you're going to figure out that something is up in the next nine months. I would really appreciate it if you didn't exactly go share this with a bunch of people," Sam says.

"Of course not," Jacob says, looking at his son-in-law's flat belly.

"So the long and short of it is, you might have a puke pal a few more times before this is all said and done."

**The Next Day**

"Time to get up!" Ty says, bouncing on his parent's bed.

"Oh, bud, stay away from Daddy's stomach," Jack says, sitting up protectively to avoid his son's foot contacting that region of his body.

"Why?" the kid asks, taking a big leap and landing on his bottom inches from his father.

Jack looks at Sam. Sam smiles, "Buddy, are you ready for a big secret?"

Ty grins at them. "Yep."

"You're going to be a big brother," Jack says.

"'Kay," Tyler says, unimpressed.

"What I mean, is we are going to have a baby," Jack explains.

"'Kay," Ty replies.

"But the secret part of this that the baby is in Daddy's stomach. Usually babies are in the mommy's stomach. So we are going to have to pretend that is where this baby is," Sam explains.

Ty looks up at his father, "Daddy, is the baby going to stay in your stomach forever?"

"Ah, no, bud. After a long time, the baby is going to come out and live with us," Jack explains.

"Are you sure it can't stay in your belly forever?" Ty asks.

"Don't you want a new brother or sister?" Sam asks.

Ty looks from one of his parents to the other. "I don't know it yet."

Jack laughs a little, "Remember back when you didn't know me?"

Ty nods his head.

"Well, that turned out ok, didn't it?" he prompts.

"Well, if the new sister is going to be as nice as Emma, I guess she can stay with us," he says decidedly.

"It might be a brother," Sam tells him.

"In that case, he can go live with Uncle Mark," Ty declares. Jack starts to laugh, but is cut short with a glare from Sam.

"You'll love a brother as much as a sister," she assures him, "Remember Ty, you cannot tell anyone that Daddy is the one having the baby, no matter what. Got it?"

Ty nods. "I want to go fishing!" he exclaims.

Jack tries to stand up, but a wave of dizziness overcomes him. He sits back on the bed with a hard 'plop'.

"Are you ok?" Sam asks moving over to him.

"I'm fine, I just don't know about fishing this early in the morning," Jack mutters.

"Are you going to be ok if I take him fishing, Jack?" Sam asks softly.

He nods.

"You can't take me fishing!" Ty exclaims.

"Why?" Sam asks, her hackles already raised, expecting some answer related to her gender.

Her son's response is obvious, "'Cause you didn't grow up on a lake, Mom."

"It's ok, bud, I taught your mother everything I know about fishing. Go get dressed," Jack says.

"That's an exaggeration, 'everything you knew about fishing'. You took me once," his wife excuses.

"I didn't say that I knew much," he says, giving her a kiss.

**Two Weeks Later**

"Daddy," Ty says, standing on the end of the bed.

"What's wrong, honey?" Sam asks.

"I want Daddy," Ty pleads.

"Ok, bud, it's ok," Jack says getting up and following his son. Tyler puts his hand in his father's and leads him toward his room. Jack sees some vomit on the floor. Jack realizes it is probably his own fault. He did let the kid have an extra serving of ice cream.

"Your stomach still hurt?" Jack asks, touching his forehead gently.

Ty shakes his head.

"Ok, let's get you cleaned up, and then you can go lay with Mommy while I get this cleaned up."

"Don't tell Mommy what happened," Ty begs.

"Honey, your mommy isn't going to be mad at you about his. No-one is ever going to get mad at you for being sick," he pauses, and then adds, "Again."

Jack looks at his son as he helps him change his shirt, and gently brushes his teeth. "Son, do you remember someone hurting you?"

Ty looks away.

"It's ok, babe," Jack prompts.

"Mommy and Grandpa were really mad," he whispers.

Oh, God. "Sweetie, they weren't mad at you. They were mad at the person who hurt you. Honey, she was a bad person. And if they'd known, they never would have left you with her. We love you, and we don't want anyone to hurt you, ever, do you understand?"

Ty nods.

"Ok, ready to go to Mommy?" Jack asks.

The boy puts up his arms, and Jack carries him in. He sets the kid down on the bed, and Ty snuggles against his mom.

"Sam, he, ah… remembers what happened to him. He was sick, and he was afraid you'd be mad. It happened once before when you were gone, that time he wet the bed. He thinks you were mad at him after the abuse. I told him that it was the woman who hurt him that you were mad at," Jack explains.

"Oh baby, you didn't do anything wrong," she says, cuddling him. "And I wish you never got hurt. It's not going to happen again, I swear," she says, rocking the boy.

"Not mad?" Tyler asks.

"Not mad," Sam assures him, touching his forehead, "You sick?"

"He told me he feels better, I've got some cleaning to do," Jack says. "Need anything, kiddo?" Jack asks.

"Blankie?" Ty asks.

"You got it, bud."

-0-0-0-

By the time Jack's cleaned up his son's room, his son is asleep, wrapped around Sam.

"I'm sorry you had to deal with that, Jack," she whispers as he sits down next to her in the bed.

"Well, I think the extra ice cream might have been the cause, so I deserved it."

"He remembers," Sam says, looking down at the boy wrapped around her.

"I don't actually know how much he remembers, Sam. It could just be more of a feeling than specifics."

"I really hoped that he wouldn't have any memory of it," Sam whispers.

"Well, he might not, when it's all said and done. Sam, he's still really young."

Sam nods her head, "Do we talk to him about it? Or ignore it?"

"I think he just needs some reassurance. He needs to know that it's not going to happen to him again."

Sam nods her head. Then she leans down next to her baby boy and whispers, "I'm so sorry, my love. But Mommy will never let you get hurt again."

**The Next Day**

Ty squirming wakes both of his parents the next morning. "How are you feeling, bud?" Sam asks softly.

"Better," he responds, stretching.

"Listen, Tyler, I wanted to talk to you about something important," Sam says.

Tyler nods, looking a little embarrassed.

"Sweetie, everyone gets sick sometimes. And you're never going to get in trouble for being sick," Sam says.

"I should have made it to the toilet," Tyler says.

"You know, when you were in Mommy's stomach, I got sick a lot. One time I missed, too," Sam admits.

"Really?" Tyler asks, looking up at mother in surprise.

"Yeah, babe. Why are you so worried you will get in trouble for being sick?" Sam asks.

Tyler shrugs.

"Ty, your mother and I are not going to be mad at you, no matter what you tell us," Jack assures him.

Ty just looks down, and shrugs again.

"Do you remember Ms. Melissa?" Jack asks.

Ty shakes his head.

"Do you remember when your arm was broken?" she asks.

Ty looks at her, "I was someplace new, and I didn't know nobody. And they kept touching my arm, and it hurt."

"Oh, baby," Sam says, hugging him tightly.

"Tyler, a woman hurt you. It was because she was bad, not you. It's not going to happen again," Sam says.

"But if anyone does hurt you, you would tell us," Jack says firmly.

Tyler nods his head.

"I love you bud," Jack says.

"Me too, so much," Sam says.

"I love you guys, too," Ty says, throwing an arm around each of his parents in order to give them a squeeze.


	20. Part 2 Chapter 14

Jack kind of regrets the fact that he is got his fiancée and himself on different teams. It makes good sense for the dangerous missions. But on a mission like this where he's basically involved in an off world party he finds himself really wishing Sam was by his side.

"Look at these people. I guess they've never heard the word unattractive here," Daniel says.

"They all look as healthy as a Jaffa," Teal'c says.

"That's a good thing, right?" Jack says, although he is beginning to have the nagging feeling that this is wrong.

"I don't see anyone who looks like they're over forty," Feretti comments.

"Um. Do things feel a little…off…here?" Jack asks watching a young women from across the room who is holding the baby that had been born that day.

"Are you crazy? It's a paradise," Daniel says with a huge grin on his face.

The young women approaching them with a large plate, and catches Jack's eye, "Yeah, sure, have an apple. What could happen?"

"I am Kynthia. Welcome to our village," she says walking up to Jack.

"Thank you. Jack O'Neill," Jack says as Kynthia uncovers the plate to revel a cake, which is of course Jack's favorite food. She holds it out to him, and he takes a piece of it.

"It is pleasing?" Kythia asks nervously.

"Very," Jack says with a nod. He turns to Daniel, and says, "You should have some."

"It is only for you," Kynthia says nervously.

"Only for me?" Jack says taking the dish out of her hands, and saying, "Thanks."

Kynthia runs off joinging a group of women, and they all start to laugh with delight.

"'It is only for you.'" Daniel mocks.

"I believe this woman wishes to spend time with O'Neill," Teal'c says.

"Thank you, Teal'c," Jack says with his mouth full.

Daniel starts talking, and Jack is having a lot of trouble focusing on what Daniel is saying. That's not unusual though. It pretty much happens to him every time that Daniel starts talking. Then his vision, focused on Kynthia across the room starts to get blurry. He starts to get worried, but then he gets distracted by the pretty shiny surface of the plate.

The Teal'c's words, "Perhaps it was a good Goa'uld," gets through and into mind.

Jack starts to laugh, and sprays food all over the room. "Right! Like there is such a thing."

"I did not intend for my statement to be humorous," Teal'c says.

"Trust me, they weren't."

A group of women surrounds Jack, and pulls him to his feet.

"Ah hi," he says awkwardly.

They lead him away, and Daniel says, "Where are you going?" The rest of SG-1 stands up in an attempt to rescue Jack. But the rest of the villagers stand up to try to get him to sit down.

Kynthia stands in front of Jack, and music starts to play. Her arms go out, and a part of her dress that looks like wings comes out.

"No, no, Teal'c get me out of here!" Jack yells.

"You will not harm him," Teal'c says stoically stepping forward.

"I'm not trying to harm him, I'm trying to marry him," Kynthia says as if it was completely obvious.

"No, no, I'm going to marry Sam," Jack says with his voice slurred.

"You drugged him!" Daniel says breaking through the crowd to get to his friend.

"Yeah, drugged," Jack agrees leaning against his friend.

"It is simply the marriage cake," Kynthia says.

"We don't drug people when we marry them on our planet," Daniel says angrily.

"It would not be a real marriage if he had not eaten the cake. Although, most people do not finish the cake," she says with a giggle.

"Great, so he overdosed," Daniel says, "Teal'c help me get him back to Earth? We need Janet's help to detox."

"There is only one way to recover from the marriage cake," Kynthia says.

"And that is…?" Daniel prompts.

"A matting."

"I only mate with Sam," Jack tells Daniel conspiratorially leaning on his shoulder.

"Yeah, well, I'm sure your fiancée will be pleased to know that," Daniel tells him.

"He has another?" Kynthia asks even though she doesn't know what the word fiancé.

"Yeah, he's promised to marry someone," Daniel says firmly.

"You have to take them to her, when they join their marriage will be complete," Kynthia says.

"Sam," Jack agrees nodding his head.

"This is going to be hard to explain," Daniel says with a sigh.

-0-0-0-

The klaxons bring Sam to the gate room, and she is met by her husband saying, "Angel!" he says falling toward her.

"Snookum," she says trying to make the point that she isn't a big fan of his using her nickname in a public place.

He is way past the point of subtle. "We've gotta have sex."

"Really? Got to?" she says with an eyebrow raise reminiscent of Teal'c.

"Yep, Kynthia said," he says with a head nod.

"And who is Kynthia?" Sam says looking with concern at Jack's teammates. She can tell that something is wrong with her husband, but she can't exactly tell what it is quite yet.

"Kynthia is the pretty girl who tried to give me a lap dance so that I would marry her," Jack says.

"What?" Sam asks in shock.

"He's drugged. A woman drugged him against his will, and he get got away right when she started his dance," Daniel defends his friend.

"But he almost married her," Sam says.

"But after we have sex, we'll be married," Jack says.

"You're planning on sleeping with this girl?" Sam says in horror.

"No, no you," Jack says making a horrified face.

"Yeah, I think we'll wait until you land," Sam says.

"Actually, it turns out that he's not going to land until the sex happens, at least according to the people of that planet," Daniel says.

"Yeah, well, I'm going to need a confirmation from Janet."

-0-0-0-

"So were the people of this planet telling the truth about the way to make Jack sober?" Sam asks her friend.

"I have no way of knowing, but I do know that I can't fix him," Janet says closing the folder in front of her.

"So in your medical opinion?" Sam asks her friend looking at her husband who is currently examining his reflection in a lamp.

"You should probably go have sex with your fiancé," Janet says.

"Ok, well, I'm not talking that boy man out in public. So, I won't be able to make it back to our house. So we'll be in my quarters."

-0-0-0-

Jack wakes up to feel Sam's sweaty naked body wrapped around his.

"Hey, are we on base?" he asks.

"You're back with us," Sam says relieved.

"I thought we didn't have sex on base," he says.

"Yeah, well you got high with some alien chick and sex was the only way to bring you down."

"Oh God, the girl with the wings, Sam I swear nothing happened between us!" Jack says remembering with horror.

"I know, your team already told me," Sam says, "And apparently now we're married."

"No, engaged," he corrects.

"No, apparently you ate the marriage cake."

"We're still having a wedding," Jack says firmly.

"Of course we are, husband, but we're still married," she says wrapping her arms around him. She likes the sound of the word "husband."

**Note: We're going to say that they still saved the Argosians, but Jack wouldn't have rapidly aged, because he and Kynthia didn't exchange bodily fluids.**


	21. Part 2 Chapter 15

**Spoilers for "Torment of Tantalus" and "Fire and Water"**

**Two Weeks Later**

Sam and Jack are off-world, on one of Jack's pre-natal appointments. The doctor smiles at him, "You're far enough along for our scan now."

"Just now? Our doctors have been able to do sonograms since the very beginning," Jack says in surprise.

Then the baby appears above his stomach in three dimensions and motion. "The baby looks like you could reach out and touch it!" Jack explains.

The doctor blinks at him, "Do not your scans have the same effect?"

Sam giggles at her husband, having to eat a bit of crow after his rather pompous comment a few minutes ago.

"That is impressive. Does it say that everything is all right?"

The doctor smiles, "Your daughter is perfectly all right."

"Daughter?" Jack says with a grin.

The doctor looks at the computer in front of him, "Oh, your daughter does have a slightly genetically higher chance of three disorders; all of them are fairly minor things. I'll print out the percentages for you."

"How do you know this?" Sam asks in awe.

"You are a scientist, would you like your daughter's genetic profile? There are several highly beneficial genes in it. You daughter has a good chance of being both physically fit and intelligent."

"How do you know all this?" Jack asks this time.

"Her genetic profile," the doctor says, as if the couple was particularly dense.

"On our world, most people don't figure out their child's genes until after the child is born. It's possible to do it before, but there is a little chance that it could result in losing the baby, so people don't do it unless they have a good reason. And most people don't do a genetic test even after the child is born. And even if our people do the test, they wouldn't be able to find out as much about the baby as you seem to do."

"So you want a copy of your child's reading?" the doctor asks again.

"Yes, please, and if there would be a way to get a textbook on this sort of technology I would appreciate it as well."

"Have you not unlocked the secrets of the genetic code?" the doctor asks in surprise.

"Apparently not as well as you have. We've haven't even finished mapping the genome.* We certainly haven't figured out what most of the genes do!"

"This knowledge is very valuable," the doctor says with a smile.

Jack flinches, he knew this wasn't going to be this easy.

"We might have to send a diplomat through to discuss the exchange of gene technology for knowledge of the Stargate."

The doctor smiles, "I think that might be a wise plan."

**Two Months Later**

Daniel stops Janet's office after work. "Ah… Catherine and Ernest are going to be on Earth for a couple more days. We were all going out to eat with them tonight. I was wondering if you wanted to come."

Janet blinks in surprise. "It would be an honor."

-0-0-0-

As Janet approaches the table, Ernest stands up. She thinks for a minute that he's just being delightfully 1940s. But he pulls her into a hug.

"Ah… ok," Janet says awkwardly, trying to escape from his embrace.

"I told you to lay off the hugs there, old boy," Jack says.

"Give him a break," Daniel says, "He's been without human contact for a long time." There is something in his eyes which makes Janet suspect that Daniel knows what that is like; to a lesser degree of course.

"I like your necklace," Janet says to Catherine as she sits down.

"Oh, thanks, honey; it's from Ancient Egypt. Daniel took it to Abydos on the first trip," she says.

Daniel's cheeks go red.

"Yeah, it made the natives worship him," Jack points out.

"They didn't really worship me so much as…." Daniel starts to object.

"No, they pretty much worshipped him," Jack objects.

Everyone at the table laughs, including Daniel.

"You know, Daniel, I didn't have a chance to ask you before. What happened with Sha're?" Catherine asks.

He hangs his head for a second. No one speaks. Sam clears her throat, and says, "Ah… Sha're died, about six months ago."

"I'm so sorry," Catherine says taking his hand.

Daniel looks, for one brief second like he's going to cry. Then he looks directly at Catherine, "I'm going to make sure that more people don't have to die because of the Goa'uld."

"That's a noble task, sweetie," she says, tapping his hands.

"What about you, any men in your life?" Ernest asks Janet abruptly.

"Ah…" Janet glances at Daniel. The maybe-date happened quite some time ago. He hasn't said anything to her since then. She's dated a few men since then, but there has been nothing serious. "Not really."

"Jack and Sam just got engaged," Daniel says cheerfully.

"I thought I saw a bit of sparkle on that finger of yours," Catherine says, holding up her hand toward Sam. Sam places her hand in the older woman's and the woman admires the ring.

"I should get you one of those," Ernest says.

"I still have the one that you gave me years ago. I just didn't want to start wearing it again until you said something."

Ernest slides off his chair and onto the floor. Teal'c tries to catch him, obviously being under the impression that he is under some kind of distress. The man shakes him off, and goes down on one knee. "Catherine, may I have the pleasure of marrying you?"

Catherine grins, "Of course," she says, leaning over to give him a kiss.

Daniel starts a loud clap that spreads around the room. Sam lets out a whistle, and Jack let out a whoop.

Everyone stands up, and hugs are passed around the group, much to Ernest's delight. Daniel's hug with him is a little longer than most. Daniel remembers how desperate he was for touch when he was eight years old and his parents were dead. And he never spent decades as the sole inhabitant of a planet.

"So Ernest, have you noticed a few changes since coming back to Earth?" Daniel asks.

Ernest leans forward with a scandalized face, "The women wear pants."

"Much easier to move in," Sam says, with a slightly offended face.

"And you have these, TV-type things," Ernest begins.

"Computers, honey," Catherine says, lightly tapping his arm.

"Right, you have these computers everywhere."

"I would say that would be different," Jack says.

"This this stone music," Ernest says, shaking his head.

"He means rock and roll," Catherine says, covering her mouth with a giggle.

"In that case, you might be glad that you missed the sixties, am I right?" Jack asks, looking around the table.

"Jack, sweetie, I think you and Catherine are the only people at the table who actually remember the sixties," Sam says.

"No way," Jack objects, looking around the table. The rest of the table nods their assent.

"Well that makes me feel old," he complains, rubbing his stomach absently. He feels a bit too old to be pregnant right now.

"Hey, now, watch yourself," Catherine teases.

"Sorry, ma'am," Jack says.

"Don't you start ma'am-ing me now. That's almost as bad as calling me old," she says playfully. "Now, Jack, I've already given Daniel an earful about why you didn't tell me he was back on Earth. What is your excuse for keeping this from me?"

Jack smiles, "Well, Catherine, I've been just a little bit busy."

Catherine glares at him, "You couldn't take five minutes out of your busy schedule to make a phone call."

"It was classified," Sam defends.

"I am going to be kept in the loop from now on, right?" Catherine asks in a voice of accusation.

"We're not going to be able to give you the details," Jack says.

"But the big, world-altering headlines?" Ernest asks with an enthralled look on his face.

"I'll call you with those from now on," Daniel promises.

**Two Days Later**

Janet rushes into the gateroom for some unknown medical emergency. Whenever she is rushing down the corridor, she tries to prepare herself for whatever she is going to find in the room. The only problem is that at the SGC, there is no way that you can predict what is going to happen.

The members of SG-1 (minus Jack, due to his recent paternity light duty, and plus his wife) appear to be in shock, and even worse, there is a member of SG-1 that is missing. Daniel. He'd gone through some training since joining the SGC, but not enough to survive on his own. If he was on his own, it was bad. Very bad.

"Captain, look at me. Look at me!" Janet demands of Sam. Sam looks up at Janet, but there is almost no understanding in her eyes.

"They're in shock," she informs Hammond, "Get them to the infirmary!" The medical unit grabs the team and pulls them to their feet. Janet really needs to know what happened to Daniel, but this team needs medical attention first.

"Captain? Where's Dr. Jackson?" Hammond demands.

"Daniel Jackson…" Teal'c says, but even this stoic man was unable to keep it together long enough to get the whole sentence out.

"Daniel's dead, sir," Ferretti says, leaving the room, reeling.

-0-0-0-

Janet can't really afford the time for a break right now. The members of SG-1 are still in shock in her infirmary, but they weren't in any danger, and her staff was looking after them. Death always sucks. But doctors, they spend their whole lives fighting death. And when you save someone as a doctor, there is some connection there that is powerful. Daniel, he was hers. Hers to watch over, hers to keep safe, hers to keep alive.

And she'd failed.

Granted, he hadn't been directly under her care when it happened, but still… she felt responsible.

"Sorry, doctor… but we need you to interpret some test results," a nurse says from her doorway.

There will be time enough to grieve when she is home.

-0-0-0-

Sam can't believe she just threw Ty's trike across the yard. She's glad the kid is out of the house for the day because of the wake. He really doesn't need to see mom freak out. She also came pretty close to yelling at General Hammond. She knows there is something wrong with her. Something more than just grief. She never got like this when her mother died.

"Hey, I thought I had dibs on being the crazy one, at least until the baby was born," Jack whispers coming up behind her.

"Jack, I don't know what is going on," she whispers, and her voice sounds more terrified than she meant it to.

"Daniel is dead, Samantha."

"Is he?" she asks.

He whips her around so he can see her face, "You were there, Samantha. You would know."

"I know that, and I know that he is dead. I remember watching him die. But I also keep expecting him to just… show up. I know that sounds like normal grief. But I know what normal grief is like, and this isn't it."

Jack searches her eyes.

"I think I should go back to the base," she says in a stunned voice.

"I'll drive you," he says.

"Jack we have people here; we're in the middle of a wake."

"A wake for someone who might not even be dead; I'll kick 'em out," he says with a shrug.

"You stay, and I'll go to the base," she says firmly.

"Ok," he says giving her a quick smile.

-0-0-0-

"You're back from the dead," Janet says to Daniel as he enters her infirmary. He can't read something in the words as she says it.

"Yeah, well, that happens to me occasionally," he says flippantly.

"You can take a seat, and I'll examine you," Janet says.

"Don't let her near you with a penlight," Jack advises.

"Janet can do whatever she needs to with me," Daniel says, sitting down on the exam table with a bounce which definitely indicates that he ISN'T dead.

"What an invitation, doctor," Janet says in a sultry voice.

Daniel's cheeks go bright red.

Janet smiles. He's fun to tease. She takes the light to shine in those gorgeous eyes of his. "This had better be the last time I sign your death certificate, Daniel," she warns him. She missed him, more than she should have.


	22. Part 2 Chapter 16

**Two Weeks Later**

"Merry Christmas, son," Mrs. O'Neill says, wrapping her arms around Jack as she gets off the plane.

"Wow, what was that?" she asks pulling back.

"What?" he asks.

"Your stomach just moved!" his mom says.

Right, how did he think he was going to get away with her not noticing? "Tacos."

"Tacos?" Mrs. O'Neill asks dubiously, "And it looks like you've gained a little weight."

"Well, tacos," Jack replies.

"You can't fool me."

"Ah… I can't?" Jack asks nervously.

"Nope, you've been eating all of Samantha's cravings with her, haven't you?"

"Yep, that's it," he says. His daughter kicks again, and Jack wants desperately to put his hand over his womb to feel his daughter moving. But his mother is already suspicious enough.

"Where is your wife and son?" she asks.

"Sam's actually out of town on a mission. She'll be home tomorrow. Jacob and Ty were very involved with a lego construction project when I left."

"Samantha is out of town? Isn't she on maternity stand-down?" his mother asks, concerned.

"Yeah, well it's not like she's in Bagdad."

"Where is she, exactly?"

Jack pauses, running through the letters and numbers of the real answer in his head, but doesn't say anything.

"Let me guess. Classified?" his mother says with a laugh.

"You're used to that, right?"

-0-0-0-

"Grandma!" Ty says, running up and hugging him.

"Hey, little man, I got you the best present ever."

"Mommy says the best present is the fact that Daddy is carrying my little sister," Ty says.

"Yeah," Jack covers, "We got one of those little backpacks where you can strap the kid up on your back when she gets here."

"Sorry, dad," Ty says, looking shocked.

"Hey, that's ok. The rule about not telling Christmas presents doesn't apply when you're telling someone other than who the gift is for," Jack says smoothly.

Jacob stares at his son-in-law in awe. Black ops has turned this man into a really good liar. He makes a mental note of this. He is pretty sure he can never believe anything that this man tells him.

"Grandma, do you want to color?" Ty asks.

"I would love it," she says, grinning at her grandson.

-0-0-0-

Ty screams in his sleep. Sam and Jack run out of their bedroom to comfort them. Of course, Sam doesn't bother with the posthetic stomach. She nearly runs into her mother-in-law in the hallway.

"Buddy, are you ok?" Jack asks, going into the room.

Ty blinks at his dad, "Yeah."

"You were screaming in your sleep," Jack informs him.

"Huh, I don't even remember it," Ty says.

"You want to snuggle?" Sam asks.

"Not really," Ty yawns, "Too tired."

"Ok, night, kid," Jack says, giving him a quick kiss before heading out of the door.

"Samantha," Mrs. O'Neill's voice stops her in the hallway, "You've lost some weight," she says pointing to her stomach.

"Ah… it's a very slimming nightgown," she says, nervously crossing her arms over her flat stomach.

Mrs. O'Neill turns her head to her son. "Tacos?" she asks, lightly touching her son's stomach. He certainly hasn't magically lost any weight.

He just looks at her.

"Jack, are you having a baby?" she asks.

"Of course not, men don't have babies," he says softly.

"No, they usually don't," she agrees.

"Mrs. Carter, it's classified," Sam says.

"You need to start calling me mom, honey, and my son is having a baby," she says with firm certainty.

"I am," Jack confesses.

She engulfs her son in a hug, and giggles as she holds him tight. "This is weird, right?" she asks.

He smiles at her, "Yes, very weird."

**The Next Day**

"Daniel, do you have somewhere to go for Christmas?" Janet asks.

Daniel wraps himself in the tightest self-hug she's ever seen. "I don't really do the whole Christmas thing," he says.

"Are you Jewish or something?" Janet asks in surprise.

"Well, certainly _something_. I grew up in a lot of different cultures. My parents were big believers in participating in whatever culture you were in. We did a lot of ceremonies when I was a kid, but nothing that was like Christmas. I was just planning on working over the break."

"Oh, Daniel, that is not going to happen. Please, come to my house."

"Really? Ah… ok, if you're sure that you don't mind," Daniel says carefully.

**Two Days Later**

Daniel wonders if he got the address wrong. There is a lot of noise coming from the house right now.

He rings the bell, and an old woman answers the door. This would be confirmation that he was at the wrong address if it were not for the fact that she had a remarkable resemblance to the good doctor.

"Ah… hello," he says awkwardly.

"You're that Dr. Daniel fellow. Come on in," she says, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him into the room.

"Ah… Daniel Jackson, yeah. How do you know about me, exactly?" he asks.

"Why, little Jan told us all about you. You need some cookies, right? Christmas cookies, you poor little orphan," the woman says, pulling off his coat.

Daniel stands there with his mouth hanging open. Janet rushes up with cheeks aflame. "Grandma!" she scolds. Then she turns to Daniel, "I did not tell them _all_ about you. I just mentioned you were coming, and this was your first real Christmas."

"Daniel!" another woman with Janet's features and an age half-way between her grandma and herself rushes forward to pull him into a tight hug. "I am so glad that you came."

"If I would have known, I would have brought more gifts," he says bashfully.

"Gifts certainly aren't necessary, and I'm sorry I didn't give you any warning," Janet says, nearly whispering, "I was just worried that you wouldn't come if you had a heads up."

"You would have been right," he whispers back.

"I just wanted to share my family with you," she whispers back.

"Bob! Daniel's here! Come up here, and take him down with the other men won't you?" Janet's mother yells down the stairs.

"Ah… Merry Christmas," Daniel says, handing Janet a brightly-wrapped bundle as he is ushered downstairs by a collection of women who seem to have come out of the woodwork.

"Ah, Danny-boy!" a stout man says as he runs up the stairs, "You ever shot a blow-gun?"

"Ah… in grad school, on a dig, the Yogua taught us," Daniel replies bashfully.

"Daniel knows what the hell he's doing, move aside," Bob proclaims.

-0-0-0-

At supper time, Daniel is put next to a girl who is about six years old. "Are you going to marry Jan?" the girl, named Annie, asks.

"What made you ask that question?" he asks nervously, looking over at the woman in question. She is looking exceptionally good tonight. She looks great in a white coat, powerful, but she looks even better when she was all dressed up.

"She didn't even bring her husband to Christmas until after they were married. Of course, those Christmas were far away at someone else's house. But I don't think she brought you just 'cause Christmas was here this year."

Daniel smiles, "Janet and I work together. We're friends. I'm sure she felt sorry for me, because I don't have any family, and my wife died not too long ago. She's a nice woman that just didn't want me to be alone for the holidays."

The girl stabs a huge piece of turkey with her fork. She jabs it into the ketchup with far more force than is necessary, and then she brings it up to her mouth, still all in one piece. She leaves a trail of ketchup across her face. "I don't think that is all of it," she proclaims.

"Do you want me to cut up your meat?" Daniel asks her.

"No, why?" she asks, truly confused by his offer.

"You're making quite a mess there, little one," he says, wiping the ketchup from the corners of her mouth.

"It's a Christmas-colored mess, though," she offers with a grin.

"Yes it is," he says with a smile.

Janet's sister leans toward Janet, "He's good with kids, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Janet says, shoving some stuffing into her mouth.

"Doug was never very good with kids," her sister reminds her.

"It wasn't that he wasn't good with them. He just didn't like to be around them," Janet clarifies.

"Well, anyway, what's the deal with you and Doctor Delicious?"

"You're as bad as my nurses!" Janet hisses under her breath.

"Is that because I have nicknames for Professor Yummy-Pants, or for realizing that you like him?" Mary asks, taking a dish from her sister's hand.

Janet sighs, "Things with Daniel and I are a little complicated. We went on something that I thought might have been a date, but… I don't know. He avoided me for a while after that. And he included me in something. It was sort of work related, and there was a group. That definitely wasn't a date. But it also wasn't exactly something you'd take a stranger too."

"You invited him to Christmas," her sister points out.

"I did," Janet agrees.

"So that means something, right?"

Janet shrugs, "I just couldn't bear the thought of him being all alone on Christmas."

"But he came."

"Yeah, he came," Janet agrees.

"So that means something, right?"

"I don't know, Freud, I just really don't know."

-0-0-0-

"Hey, I'm going to take off," Daniel tells Janet much later that night.

"Let me walk to your car," Janet says, pushing past the group of cousins she's chatting with.

"Ooh…." A teenage boy says.

"Shut up," an aunt mutters to him, poking him in the ribs.

Daniel and Janet make their way out to the porch.

"You've got a big family," Daniel says.

"Yeah, sorry, they're a little bit crazy," Janet laughs.

"They're… great. I haven't seen an extended family like this since I left the Middle East."

"I really appreciate you supervising whatever they were doing with weapons in the basement. They needed adult supervision."

"I'm reasonably certain I was the youngest one there."

"Youngest, and most responsible, trust me," she says.

They've reached the car by now. "So, thanks for including me," he says, fidgeting.

"Any time, Daniel," she says.

"What an invitation, Doctor," he says, climbing into his car.

Janet blinks in surprise as he drives away. Daniel flirts? Since when?


	23. Part 2 Chapter 17

**Spoilers for "Hathor"**

**A Month Later**

The original plan was to leave Ty with her father when she went to try on her wedding dress. But her dad wasn't feeling good today, so Samantha Carter has to take her three year-old son to the dress shop with her.

"Mommy, your dress is beautiful," he says in awe, touching it.

"Thank you Ty," she says.

"Whose dresses are these?" he asks, touching the bridesmaid dresses.

"Those are for Auntie Martha and Janet," Sam explains.

"Is the little one for me?" Ty asks, with eyes alight.

She giggles, "No, that is a flower girl dress, for your cousin Lilly."

"Oh, where is my ring bear dress?" he asks.

"Ring bearer," she corrects, "And you're not going to wear a dress, you're going to wear a handsome suit just like Daddy."

Ty thinks about this for a while, "But you can't spin around in a suit."

"Sure you can," his mother assures him.

"Right, but it doesn't twirl up like a dress."

Sam sighs, and looks at her son. She is willing to let him be himself, but not at a wedding, for crying out loud. If she buys her son a dress, everyone is going to think that it was her idea. They would think she was some sort of a monster who used her three-year-old son to make a statement about gender roles.

"How come everyone gets to wear something pretty except for me?" Ty asks mournfully.

"Sweetie, I'll let you pick out any tie you want. Really, anything, no matter how crazy. And then we'll buy one to match for Daddy."

Ty sighs, "I wish I could wear a pretty dress."

Sam looks at her son. It would be different if he just threw a tantrum. Then she would have no qualms about dragging him out of the dress shop, kicking and screaming. But this, this passive but pensive acceptance, is too much for her. "Your father is going to kill me," she mutters, with her eyes rolling to the sky. Then to the owner of the dress shop, she says, "Can I get another flower girl dress, in size 3T?"

**One Week Later**

Daniel is running his fingers over the new device.

"You mind if I take a look at it?" she asks, taking a few steps closer to it.

"Sure," he says, turning to her with a genuine grin on his face, "You're a lot more qualified than I am."

"I'm not sure that anyone is really qualified to examine a machine that magically brings people back from the dead," she replies dryly. The two of them look at the machine for a little bit before Janet speaks again, "So what does it say?"

"Nothing that explains its purpose," Daniel says, running a hand along an inscription. That brings his hand very close to contacting Janet's. She looks up at him trying to figure out if it was intentional or not. His eyes are still on the inscription, and she can't tell.

"Dr. Jackson, the General wants you in the control room," an airman says.

"Good luck figuring it out, Janet," Daniel says.

-0-0-0-

Daniel Jackson is amazed. Hathor, a goddess, right in front of him. It was all of his ancient texts coming alive and allowing him to meet the Pharaohs. Only better – after all, the Pharaohs were only part-god. All the interesting artifacts that he had studied, all the stories that he had read, it was like all of this, and so much more.

"Dr. Jackson? Please remain. We have other questions," Hathor says.

Daniel closes the door behind him, thinking of all the questions that he wants to ask her, "Sure."

"It is time that you become our chosen one," Hathor says.

Daniel walks toward her, knowing that that is a lie. No-one chooses Daniel. Not to be on their team in gym class, not to be their friends, not to be adopted. "Chosen one?"

"Will you always honor us?" Hathor asks.

Daniel isn't comfortable with whatever is going on right now. It sounds way too much like wedding vows, and he's far close to his first marriage to participate in those. Everything in him wants to scream 'no', but he hears himself saying, "Yes."

"Would you… die for us?" she asks.

"Die?" No way in hell. He wasn't going to die for her. He didn't particularly want to be in the same room as her.

"Yes," he hears himself say.

-0-0-0-

"Jack, there you are," Sam says, running down the hallway after him.

"Here I am, Angel," he says with a grin.

"I wanted to have a word with you about Hathor, if you don't mind," Sam says a little nervously. Jack is acting really weird, and she doesn't know why.

"Fascinating lady, isn't she?" he says.

Sam's blood boils a little bit, "A little too fascinating, don't you think?"

"What do you mean?" Jack asks.

Sam's voice has a little bit of a dangerous edge as she says, "Well, she seems to have you all so… infatuated."

"Us all?" Jack says with raised eyebrows.

"Yes. The men. Don't you think it's a little dangerous to be giving a Goa'uld such royal treatment?" she presses.

"Ah, relax, Sammy. She's on our side."

"So she says," Sam says.

Jack gives her a glare. "Captain, if you don't mind my saying so, you're treating her exactly the way you hate to see people treat Teal'c. A bit of a double standard, don't you think?"

"Teal'c has proven whose side he's on. She hasn't," Sam points out.

"Sam, have you ever heard the old saying: 'My enemy's enemy is my friend'?" Jack says with his voice much too dismissive for her taste

"But even when the CIA grants sanctuary to an enemy turncoat, they never trust him. They watch him like a hawk," Sam presses.

"Daniel's watching her right now," Jack says, patting her on the shoulder, "Relax."

"That's a little like having the fox watch the hen house, Sir," Sam says as Jack walks away.

-0-0-0-

Daniel knows that he was supposed to keep Hathor in her quarters. He doesn't actually know why he went with her to the gate room, he didn't really want to, but none the less he was here now.

"Tell us, our beloved, what are the questions swelling in your mind?" she asks, running her fingers across the sarcophagus and her eyes across the gate.

"I spent years studying you as a student, and now I'm… I'm with you. Do you know that you're described in history as the most beautiful woman ever was or ever will be, able to control men with just your beauty?" he says, his stomach twisting a little at the description. It was a bit too much like what is happening to him right now.

Hathor isn't paying attention to his worshipful words right now. Instead, she is looking at the gate, "We are pleased to see you, old friend. It won't be long until you will serve us once again." Then she turns to Daniel and asks him, "Tell us, do you believe this to be true, now that you have come to know us?"

"Well, I certainly have a deeper understanding of it now," he says, wishing that the academic and the emotional could stay apart in his mind.

"We are the queen of the gods. We are the mother of all gods," Hathor informs him.

"Yes," he says, feeling absolutely sure that that is true. Then he realizes that this doesn't have much meaning, "What does that mean, exactly?"

"From us, all others come."

"I don't understand," he repeats.

"The Jaffa. He has a Goa'uld child in his belly?"

"A larva. Yes," Daniel says.

"Did you ever wonder from whence the children come?"

Actually, Daniel had wondered a lot of things about the Goa'uld, but their methods of reproduction were not things that had ever made the list. "Are you saying that they come from you?"

"Yes. And others, like us."

"My god. You're like a queen bee. You create the Goa'ulds," Daniel says in shock.

-0-0-0-

"So you actually create the larvae. How?" Daniel asks Hathor when they are back in his quarters.

"We must first have the code of life from the juices of the species intended as the host," Hathor says.

"Code of life?" Daniel says, confused. Even a linguist could get tied in knots by the unusual language that Hathor used.

"In order to ensure compatibility for the Goa'uld child and the host," she explains.

A sick realization dawns on him, "DNA. You mean you need DNA to prevent rejection." Daniel is really hoping that he is wrong about the method that the Goa'uld use to secure the DNA.

"The code of life," Hathor says with a smile, "We do so enjoy the method of procuring the code in your species." She pulls off Daniel's glasses, and runs a hand through his long hair. "It is much more pleasurable than most."

"I bet," Daniel says, with a bite in his words.

"Since you are to be our first pharaoh," she says, pushing the jacket off his shoulders, "You will honor us by being the one to contribute the code." She puts a hand on his neck possessively.

"You want me to help you create more Goa'ulds?" he says in horror. She moves over to try to kiss him, and he reaches up to try to push her away. No, not this. He's a married man. Sha're may be dead, but he still loves her. He's not going to betray her, and he certainly isn't going to help create a bunch of babies that will destroy the universe. Especially not when he can't even create good normal babies.

Hathor breathes out a pink mist, and Daniel breaths it in.

He still wants to fight her, but he finds that his body, and even most of his mind, are incapable of protests. The part of his mind that he still has control of screams within him, but the screams don't go anywhere.

-0-0-0-

"It must be a pretty powerful drug Hathor's using. Jack is Special Forces trained to fight mind control techniques," Sam informs Janet.

"Well, not Goa'uld techniques, apparently," Janet says dismally.

"Yup. Well, Mama said there'd be days like this," Sam says. Although, that isn't really true. Her mother might not have been an optimist, but she hasn't exactly said that there would be days where your fiancé gets taken over by a mind-controlling beautiful women.

"Really? My ex-husband said that. 'You outa your mind, honey-buns? There is a reason they call it this man's Army'," Janet says with a roll of her eyes.

"'This man's Army'? Your husband actually said that?" Sam says with a laugh.

"Yeah. So, of course, I explained to him that it wasn't the Army, it was the Air Force, and they've had women for decades," Janet says.

Sam shakes her head, glad that for once there is someone out there that actually understands what she is going through, "Man. I think maybe it's just me, but I can't figure out how to feel like one of the guys with these guys, you know what I mean? I always feel like I'm The Girl."

"That's it," Janet says grinning at Sam.

"What?" Sam asks nervously.

"You just gave me an idea on how to get us out of here. Look, if Hathor's control drug is hormone-driven like I suspect, that means she's making the men… libidinous."

Sam flinches. She really doesn't want to do anything that is going to be hard to explain to Jack later. She won't have the excuse of mind control. Besides, the idea of kissing anyone but her husband disgusts her. "Okay. Why do I get the feeling I don't like where this is going?"

-0-0-0-

Jack walks into the room deliberately. The way that you fight mind control is by keeping something important in your mind.

Sam, Ty, Sam, Ty, Sam, Ty. Two important things have to be better than one.

"Excuse me, ma'am. I'm ,uh… I'm sorry to barge in on you like this, but I'd like to ask you some questions." Well, already this isn't going well. Is he really apologizing to the women who imprisoned his wife?

"About?"

"About you, actually. See, you've… You've got me a little off-balance, and that's very unnatural for me."

"We are told by the one that you call Daniel that you are responsible for ridding us from the vile one, Ra," Hathor says seductively.

Jack nods, trying to make eye contact with the women, "Yeah, well, we kinda touched on that earlier. But I'd like to be the one asking the questions right now, if you don't mind."

"We must praise you and gift you a great honor."

This was a bad plan. He never should have gotten closer to someone who was using mind control on him. Now is the time to retreat, "Yeah. I'm sure that'd be just great, but not right…"

A pink mist fills the air, and Jack breaths it in. His mind screams, but his body, his face, they just sit there like a blank tablet, waiting for Hathor's stylus to imprint something on them. She pulls open his shirt, and then pulls a part of her own dress off to reveal a machine. She presses it against him. "Do not worry yourself. You will enjoy the richness that come with what we are giving you."

Jack flinches, "No, I'm pregnant," He protests, trying to push her away, "Please."

"You cannot fool me, the men of your species do not get pregnant. You will cherish the good health and long life that goes with being…" she pushes Jack away, against the wall, "Hathor's first, new, Jaffa."

-0-0-0-

This has definitely not been Sam's day. She was basically put in prison for trying to save the world. She escaped from that prison by seducing co-workers, people that she worked so hard to try to make see her as something other than just a girl. Then she conked the commander of the base across the head. Now she's looking at her pregnant husband in a tub full of screaming Goa'uld.

At least Hathor left. "Let's get him out of there." She rushes in to move under his arm to take the weight, "Okay, honey, we gotcha. Okay."

They pull Jack over to bench. Janet hands Sam her gun, saying, "Here, take this." She reaches into his new pouch, and feels around, "Yeagh… No. Nothing went in there yet."

"This is a good thing," Sam says firmly.

"Uh, maybe," Janet says.

"He no longer has an immune system. Without a Goa'uld larvae, he will soon die," Teal'c says.

Jack's eyes are still staring into the distance.

"Jack!" Sam screams.

He doesn't react to her words. "We have to get him into the sarcophagus."

-0-0-0-

Jack opens up his eyes, and tries to figure out where he was. Wherever he is, he's getting shot at. He ducks just in time.

Electricity zaps over the surface of the sarcophagus. Damn, Janet thought. That would have been a very useful tool to have in her infirmary.

"I don't think this is good," Jack says, while giving the signal to get out another door. The door doesn't even have time to shut before there is a big explosion.

"You all right?" Jack says to all present, but with a special emphasis to his wife.

"Yeah, good to have you back, Jack," Sam says.

"What, I left?" Jack asks, confused.

Janet stands up, holding her arm, which she has just noticed is causing her pain like it might be broken. They open the door to reveal a sarcophagus that is on fire.

"Jack, can I have a look?" Sam says softly, looking at her husband's stomach.

"The baby?" he asks with concern

She pulls his jacket open, "Wow. That's a miracle," she says in awe.

"Babies usually are," he whispers.

"Do you think the baby is going to be ok?" Sam asks over his shoulder to Janet.

"I don't know. We should get him looked out as soon as this is all over," her friend replies.

-0-0-0-

"Did you find anything?" Jack says as he watches his wife and Janet Fraiser take samples from the floor of the locker room. Just an hour ago, the good doctor had done an ultrasound which had revealed that his child had suffered no negative side effects for its brief run in with a Jaffa pouch. Which, of course, made sense; after all, Jaffa did have babies.

"Probably nothing we can use. Maybe we'll at least get a cellular level analysis on the Goa'ulds, maybe we even find some DNA information."

Daniel shifts on his feet, and does an awkward self-hug, "A lot of that will probably be mine."

Janet glances back, making a note to have a talk with Daniel about dealing with rape pretty soon. She'll try to get him into therapy, but she already knows that he's probably going to say no to that.

"Ew," Jack says, and Janet wants to slap him. That was definitely not the appropriate reaction.


	24. Part 2 Chapter 18

**The Next Day**

A knock at his door? Daniel has lived in this apartment for months, and he's yet to have a single knock at the door. Not one stray Girl Scout selling cookies or a pair of Mormons looking to convert a lost soul. Why would he get a visitor now, on the day he least wanted one?

He opens the door, "Janet?" he says in surprise.

"Do you mind if I come in?" she asks, looking at the floor.

"Actually I'm not feeling too well," he lies.

Then he meets her eyes. She's laughing silently. He just said the absolute worst thing you could say when you're trying to get a doctor to leave your place.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

"Nothing, I'm fine," he says quickly.

"Oh, so you're not dealing with the fallout of what that bitch did to you?" she says.

There is a long moment of silence, and then Daniel says, "Are you here as a doctor or a friend?"

"Whichever one you need most right now. I also brought beer and sleeping pills. But you have to choose, you can't have both," she says, holding up a paper bag.

Daniel smiles, "Come on in."

"Was that yes to the beer?" she asks, holding the paper bag up again.

"Yeah," he says, taking the bag and setting it on the table. He pulls out two bottles, and then goes over to the cabinet to fiddle around a little bit for a bottle opener.

"Daniel, I'm really sorry about what Hathor did to you."

He shrugs.

"Daniel, what exactly did she do to you?" Janet presses.

He was broken. And no-one took the broken ones. When people found out that you were broken, they always sent you back. You don't have nightmares, you don't frown, you don't cry, and you hide the trauma whenever you can.

"Nothing, she didn't do anything," Daniel says quickly.

"Daniel," Janet says softly. He looks into her eyes. They are compassionate, but still… you hide the damage whenever you can.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Daniel, she took control of your mind. She made you do things that you didn't want to do. Whatever happened to you was not your fault. I'm not going to think less of you for whatever it was. Now tell me, how the hell did she get a hold of your DNA?"

Daniel is silent for a few long minutes, "Is this going to go into my file?"

"Not if you don't want it to, and if you can convince me you have all the help and support you need to get through this."

He sighs, "I contributed the 'code of life'."

"By conventional means?" Janet asks.

Daniel nods. There is silence for a little bit. Then he looks up into Janet's eyes. He sees such sympathy there that he starts to cry.

Janet moves over into engulf the man in her arms. "It's going to be ok."

"I'm sorry for blubbering all over you," Daniel mutters.

"Hey, I came here specifically to be blubbered over," she says with a little laugh.

And she stays, for a couple of hours. No-one ever before stayed when Daniel was wounded. Not ever.

**Two Days Later**

Jack walks into the kitchen where Sam is cooking with his arms crossed. "Is there a particular reason why my _son_ is spinning around the living room in a _dress?"_

Sam bites her lip. Jack came home early. She was hoping this would remain a secret until their wedding day. I mean, he wouldn't yell at her as they walk down the aisle would he?

"He thinks that dresses are much prettier than suits," she begins.

He raises his eyebrows, "Well, so do I. That's a good reason to hang out with girls in pretty dresses, not to _wear_ them."

Sam giggles, "He's three, it's probably just a stage."

"Samantha, I can just guarantee you that our son not going to make his cross-dressing debut at the grand old age of three at our wedding."

"Jack, this really isn't that big of a deal," Sam protests.

"Sam, it is. This isn't a little ring on his finger that he can take off if he changes him mind years later. This is a dress that he's going to wear at his parents' wedding. People are not going to forget this."

Sam pauses, "You know what, Jack, people also didn't forget the fact that I was the only female on the football team in high school. They didn't forget that I am in a male dominated career. And I really, and truly, don't give a crap."

"But you made those decisions when you were much older. He's three, and I will not let him make a decision that is going to affect the rest of his life," Jack says firmly.

"Jack, I want you to go in there, look that boy in his eyes, and tell me he doesn't know what he wants out of life."

Jack throws his head back with an air of surrender. "All right, but so help me, if our kid ever gets beat up for this, I am blaming you."

Ty runs into the room, "Mommy, can you paint my nails to match the dress?"

"Honey, I don't think we should push our luck," Sam says, looking at her husband's face.

"Come on, Sam, you can do mine too," Jack says with an air of complete surrender.

She blinks at him in shock.

"I know you have some of that clear nail polish stuff," he says.

Sam giggles.

"I just have a couple of questions. What with my being pregnant and with you wearing a dress, exactly which one of is going to be walking down the aisle, and which one of us is going to be at the end waiting?" he asks, pulling her close to him.

Sam giggles into his shoulder.

"And when we dance for the first time, which one of us is going to lead?" he continues.

"Me, of course, I'm always the leader," Sam says.

"Except at work," Jack presses.

"Well, give me some time," Sam says with a sly grin.

"You are wearing a dress, right? You're not going to show up wearing your fatigues are you?" Jack continues to tease.

"Maybe I should wear my dress blues, just like you," Sam teases.

Jack makes a face, "Not really, right?"

"You don't like me in my Class As?" she asks. "And that is technically a skirt," she points out.

"I love you in your Class As, but on your wedding day, I want you in a long flowing white gown," he says with a little bit of pout.

"Don't worry, Jack. I was just teasing. I figure I can play the girl for once in my life."

"You'd better watch it, or I might show up in a hoop skirt," he warns.

"Really, Daddy?" Ty asks excitedly.

"No, Bud, not really," he says, picking up his son and balancing the boy between his two parents.

"'Cause dresses are fun, Dad."

"I'll take your word for it bit."

**Two Weeks Later**

Jacob smiles at his daughter as she sits before a vanity, finishing up the last of her make-up. "You look beautiful, sweetheart," he says.

"Thanks," she mutters, "How are you feeling?"

"It's a good day, Sammy, physically as well as mentally. I'm just glad that I got to be around for your wedding."

"Dad, you're going to be around for a lot more moments like this."

"I hope so," he says with a sad smile, standing before her and resting his hands upon her shoulders.

-0-0-0-

"Come on, Lilly," Ty says, taking his two-year old cousin by his hand.

"They're all going to be looking at me," she whispers.

"No, they're all going to be looking at me," Ty corrects. Sam giggles behind the two children, knowing that truer words have never been spoken.

"What if I trip?" she asks, looking down at the shoes that she hated. Sam's sister-in-law had a fight to get the kid out of her tennis shoes and into her Mary Janes. The whole time, her month-old baby brother had been crying, wanting Mommy to pick him up.

If it had been Sam's kid, she would have let her wear the tennis shoes, and picked up the baby. She has really reached the point in her life that she doesn't give a crap what other people think of her. How could you, with a pregnant husband and a son in a dress?

"If you trip, I'll trip bigger," her cousin confidently replies, taking her hand.

"Ready!" the girl says to her mother. The ushers open the doors of the church, and the two children walk down the aisle in matching dresses.

Sam hears the snickers and shocked gasp of the crowd when they see Ty. She closes her eyes, hoping that that isn't going to destroy her son. But then she looks over, and he's walking down the aisle with a slow and patient 'right, together, left, together' step that she taught him. He's so focused on keeping time with his cousin, walking in perfect symmetry, that he doesn't realize the effect that he's having on the rest of the room.

When the cousins reach the front of the church, they look at each other, and do something that was obviously planned. They spin in a rapid circle, causing the dress and the petticoats to lift. Sam is relieved that her husband talked her son into wearing shorts under the dress. And she finds herself wishing he'd had the same discussion with his niece.

Sam hears her father behind her make a snort.

Mark and his wife link elbows at the entrance to the chapel. They follow the children down the aisle with the same step. Next, Janet and Daniel look at one another for one second before they link arms. Daniel's face takes on a bit of a blush. Janet squeezes his elbow in hers and whispers, "Here we go."

About halfway down the aisle, Daniel messes up the footwork, and pulls Janet to a complete stop. They stand in the middle of the aisle, and Daniel's face is beat red. Janet starts up the footwork with a strange little hop. It's impressive enough that she can do that in heals (although not surprising, Daniel muses, he's seen her run in heals often enough) that it distracts the attention from him. Teal'c, walking in by himself behind, starts his walk a little early to further take attention off the blushing anthropologist. Teal'c is wearing a stocking cap on his head. Sam tried to talk him into a more formal hat, but Teal'c was almost as stubborn as her son.

Sam walks up the door, and everyone stands up and turns toward her. Her stomach twists; she doesn't like having people focus on her.

"Ready, baby girl?" her father whispers.

She nods her head, and they start to walk down the aisle. Jack smiles at her from his place in the front of the chapel. His stomach is bigger than hers. She's been trying to match for most of the pregnancy, but if she wore the right size today, she wouldn't have fit in the dress.

She grins back at him. It's finally happening, what should have happened years ago. They reach the front of the chapel, and her father grabs her right hand at the elbow, extending it to Jack. Jacob's hand shakes a little at the motion, and Sam can't be sure if it's from physical weakness or emotion. She turns to her father to smile, and sees that there are tears running down his face. Jack take the hand that is offered him with his left hand, and reaches his right hand around to hold Jacob's for one long second before pulling him into a hug.

"You take care of her, Jack," her father whispers spontaneously.

"We'll all take care of each other," Jack responds.

A few minutes later there it is time for them to say their vows. Jack turns fully toward her, and takes both of her hands in his, "Angel, you saved me on the day that we met. Little did I know that that would be the least amazing thing that you ever did for me." Sam smiles, "You are amazing, a national treasure. And I am beyond lucky that you are choosing to share your life, your father," at this Jacob tears up again, "And our son with me. I am so excited about this adventure that we are beginning together." He swings her hands a little awkwardly, "So, ah… yeah, I love you."

She grins at him, "My turn?" she whispers.

"Well, you know me and words," he whispers back as he shrugs.

"You did great," she assures him.

"Jack, I would have to say that you've done some pretty amazing things for me as well." Here there is laugher in the room, but only form the SGC contingent, those who know that he is doing the truly amazing thing of having a baby. "I love you, Jack. I loved you, illogically, from the first moment that I saw you. And if you know anything about me, you know that I don't often go against logic. But you were worth going against logic. When we broke up," she takes a breath, "It nearly destroyed me. And I am unbelievably grateful for this serendipity that brought us back together. There is no way that I am ever going to let you go. You make my life interesting. From the strange hallucination ramblings that came out of your mouth when we first met, to the proposal which involved fish guts, and the incredibly sweet way you are with our son. I am excited to begin a life with you. And I can already tell, that life, over the next few months, and years, it's going to be bumpy," she looks at her father here, "But it's also going to be wonderful."

"Do you take this women to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, through sickness and health, as long as you both shall live?" the pastor asks.

"I do," Jack says, looking at his wife with love in his eyes.

"Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, through sickness and health, as long as you both shall live?"

"I do," Sam says.

"You may now kiss the bride," the pastor informs them.

Jack puts his right hand on the small of Sam's back, and his left encircles her shoulder. She thinks nothing of the embrace until the moment that his lips make contact with hers. Then the swings her down into a swoop. She lets out a little squeal of surprise, and her veil goes flying off her head.

Ty runs over, and picks it up, and holds it out to his mother, "You dropped this, Mommy."

Sam pulls back from Jack's lips enough to say, "Thank you, baby," as she takes the veil out of his hand and holds it above her head with one hand. The crowd behind her breaks into laugher.


	25. Part 2 Chapter 19

**Spoilers for "Singularity"**

Sam decides to play nice, and actually let Jack lead, at least during their first dance as a married couple. He is, after all, a very good dancer, but there is something off about him tonight.

"Honey, are you ok?" she asks softly.

"Back hurts a little bit," he confesses, "I'll be fine."

"It was that dip," she says lightly, smacking his back, "You shouldn't have done that while pregnant."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Even in the early stages of pregnancy, it can make you more prone to injury, and you aren't really in the early stages of pregnancy anymore," Sam scolds.

"Well, I won't do it again," he whispers in her ear.

"Remember the way that we danced on our first date?" she asks.

He nods.

"You made me feel so safe," she says.

"Past tense?" Jack asks, pulling back from her warm embrace to look at her.

"I haven't felt safe since Ty was in that hospital bed," she confesses.

He runs a hand up and down her back, "Sammy, we're never going to let that happen again. You are safe."

And then, for the first time in a long time, she believes it. She leans her head against him, and lets go. He feels the moment that she relaxes in his arms, and grins. The music ends, but Sam doesn't notice. Jack pulls away, and Jacob takes his place.

"I'm happy for you," Jacob whispers to his daughter as soon as she is in his arms. "I still think that you and Jack should go somewhere on a honeymoon."

"We've been living together for a while, and we're pretty close to having two children. It's just not the right time."

"I feel like this is because of me, because of my cancer. Sammy, the last thing in the world I would want to do is rob you of even the littlest bit of happiness. I don't want to be the reason that you don't get this."

She smiles, "You're not."

He gives her his patented 'you've-got-to-be-kidding-me' look.

"You're not the whole reason, Dad. We're going to have another baby, and work is crazy right now. And Jack and I, we never do things in the right order. There is not some law that the honeymoon has to come right after the wedding."

"If it doesn't, they don't tend to call it a honeymoon," Jacob protests softly.

"We'll have our honeymoon sometime when we won't have a million other things on our mind," Sam says.

Jacob smiles at his daughter, "I'm so proud of you. Not just for the wedding, for everything that you've done, everything that you are."

Sam tears up, "Thank you, Daddy."

**The Next Day**

Sam glances at the clock the day after her wedding. It's eight o'clock. Ty never sleeps past six. So either her father woke up early to intercept the kid, or her son is sick. She gets up and wanders through the house, looking for her boys. They are nowhere to be found. She goes into the backyard, calling to them, but still nothing.

She runs back up into the bedroom that she shares with her husband frantic, "Jack, get up, and call… I don't know if we should call the SGC or the police!"

"What happened?" he asks sitting up frantic.

"Ty and Dad are missing!" she exclaims.

He laughs.

"It's not funny, Jack!" she says.

"C'mere honey," he says, holding out his hands to her. "They are fine, and I promise to never ever surprise you again. I promised you a long time ago that we would spend the whole day in bed. Life kind of got in the way. But if we aren't getting a honeymoon, I figured we could at least get a whole day alone in bed."

"They're fine?" she asks.

"They left for Daniel's apartment last night after we were in bed. They're going to come back tomorrow morning."

"Did you forget that you actually kept your promise to spend the whole day in bed with me?" she teases.

"Yes, but neither of us is sick this time," he says.

"Well, then it will be much more fun," she says.

"Yep," he says, kissing her.

**Two Weeks Later**

Sam looks at the little girl in front of her. Actually, this girl isn't so terribly little. She is probably around ten or eleven.

"It's okay. Don't worry, everything's going to be fine. Can you hear me? You're very brave," she tells the small girl. The girl looks at her, but still doesn't say anything. Sam knows that if her son were in this little girl's shoes, he would be terrified of the mask that she is wearing on her face to protect her from germs. That is probably it. Sam turns to Janet and asks if she can take her mask off.

"I think that'll be okay. Looks like we're dealing with a bacterial infection. Just don't get too close."

She pulls off her mask so the little girl can see her grin at her, "There, that's better, huh? You feel like telling me your name now?" The little girl stares at her, and then looks away. Sam speaks in her most encouraging voice, "That's okay. You remember my name? Samantha Carter. But you can call me Sam."

Cassie takes the tag that these people had given her dead friend, and snaps it on her hospital gown. Sam's heart aches at the pain in the little girls' eyes when the focus on her once again, "Oh, no. No, honey. You're not going to die. Why don't you just lay down and rest for a while, okay? Okay." Cassie lays back down, but refuses to let go of the tag.

-0-0-0-

Daniel wonders if she saw her parents die. When he was a kid, other people seemed to think that was the saddest part of what happened to his parents. He never did. The fact that he would never again bend over a translation with his mother, or brush off an artifact with his father, that was the saddest thing for him. He remembers how grief doesn't come all at once. It comes in little absences, little holes in your life that spans years after years.

Samantha bends down to look in Cassie's eye, "Hey, you okay? Don't be afraid, I'll be holding your hand the whole way, all right? I know it looks kind of scary, but it's really a lot of fun."

Sam stands up, and takes the girl's hand. Daniel holds the girl's other hand. He tries to remember if anyone ever held his hand after his parents died. He doesn't think so. At least until Sara and Sha're, and that was different. Sam counts down, and the three of them jump into the wormhole.

-0-0-0-

Sam hasn't left Cassie's room since she arrived on Earth five hours ago. Daniel volunteers to go get Sam when she has a phone call that she has to answer. When he walks in, Sam is sitting next to the bed where the small child is asleep. Sam is stroking the girl's hair. Daniel remembers that his mother used to do this before he died. He really wishes there had been someone like Sam there after they died.

Sam moves a little, and Cassie wakes up. "Hey. How you feeling?" Sam asks. When Cassie doesn't answer, she doesn't press it. Daniel remembers how much trouble he got into for being a quiet kid, and he wasn't even non-verbal like Cassie. "Listen, I have to go somewhere for a little while. But you're not going to be alone. Daniel's going to be here the whole time. Remember Daniel?"

Daniel smiles at the girl, who looks just a little bit panicked.

"You're very brave, remember. I'll be back before you know it," Sam says.

"Please don't go," the girl begs.

"You feel like telling me your name?" Sam asks.

"Cassandra," she says.

"Hi, Cassandra," Sam says.

"I hurt," Cassie says. Daniel's heart clenches. No, this isn't fair. This kid has already been through enough emotional pain for a life time. She should be excused from all the physical pain as trade.

"Where?" Sam asks. Cassie taps her chest.

-0-0-0-

Cassie looks up at Janet, and says, "Thank you." Janet's heart melts a little. Janet hasn't had a patient that was a child for a long time. And Janet had forgotten, in the years since her divorce, how desperately she had wanted children.

"You are welcome," she says, smiling at the kid. Cassie makes it halfway across the room before a look of pain comes across her face. She grabs her chest, and then falls backwards. Sam scoops her up.

"Get her on the table!" Janet commands. Janet rushes over to feel her pulse.

"Oh, my God. What is it? What's happening?" Sam asks frantically.

"She's got an irregular heartbeat. She's in arrest," Janet says, calling a code blue into the intercom.

"What? What do I do?" Sam asks frantically, as Janet starts CPR and other people rush in to help. Janet falls into the familiar medical terms as she works to save the little girl's life. Even when a nurse uses the paddles, Janet maintains a clinical detachment. But the relief that she feels when the girls' heart restarts is not just the relief of a doctor. She thinks the kid might again be out of the woods, when she makes a horrible realization.

"Wait. Wait… wait…. wait… wait. Oh, my God."

"What is it?" Sam asks.

"Get me a chest x-ray, stat," she says to those around her. Then she looks at Sam, "I don't know. Listen," she says, handing the stethoscope over to Carter. There is a strange mechanical whirling sound beneath the heartbeat. This is not a good sign.

-0-0-0-

Daniel is sitting on a chair in the hallway outside of Cassie's room when she hears the girl wake up with the word, "Mom?"

Sam's voice is soft. Motherly. "Hey. You okay?"

"I was dreaming about my mom," Cassie says. The words are like a punch in Daniel's guts. He had so many dreams about his parents when he was a kid. They were so happy in the dreams, so blissfully happy, and that only made it worse when you woke from the dreams to the cold hard real world.

"You miss your mom very much?" Sam asks.

"I'm tired," Cassie says.

"Well, you should get some rest. Don't worry, everything's going to be just fine. And when you get better, I promise you I am going to show you all kinds of really wonderful things about this planet," Sam soothes.

"Promise?" Cassie asks timidly.

"You bet," Sam says, a little while before she walks out of the room.

As soon as she enters the hallway, Daniel stands up and asks, "How is she?"

"She's fine. Sleeping." Sam says.

Daniel wants to provide this girl with comfort. He needs to, in some confusingly cosmic way, "Um. Um, if you want… I can sit with her tomorrow. For a few hours," he stammers.

"No, I'm okay," Sam says dismissively.

"Okay."

"I just… I want to do this," Sam says firmly.

So do I, Daniel says in his head. Out loud he says, "Okay. But I guess what I'm saying is that you don't have to do this alone."

"Thanks," Sam says, rubbing his arm before walking away.

-0-0-0-

Daniel walks into the room to see the small girl tossing in the bed. He stands next to Sam as she says, "How could they do this?" with more heart than he usually hears from his teammate.

"Well, to the Goa'uld, she's not as we see her. She's a tool. Her death is a very cheap way to get rid of us," Daniel says.

"I know I'm supposed to be detached," Sam cries.

He looks at her with surprise, "Who said that?"

"Sometimes I forget you're not military," Sam whispers with something that is almost a laugh.

Daniel wonders to himself if that was supposed to be an insult. A year ago, he never would have imagined that anyone would mistake him for a member of the military.

Has he really changed that much?

**Two Days Later**

Daniel still can't believe that Cassie almost blew up. They had taken this little girl, made her watch everyone she knew die, and then put a bomb inside of her heart.

He also can't imagine that this little girl is going to be ok. That she is playing at the park right now. He and Sam each have a hold of her arm, and they are swinging the girl between them. This is one of the things that he'd forgotten about before his parents died. How many other sweet little things did parents and children do with each other that he didn't remember?

Jack and his son appear from the other end of the park. "Cassie! Come play with our dog!" Ty shouts.

As soon as Cassie runs after the dog, Daniel turns to Sam, and says, "So, how sure were you, really?"

"I can't explain it, Daniel; I just knew," she says with a shrug of her shoulders.

Teal'c joins them from behind, and says, "Mother's instinct, perhaps."

Sam shakes her head ever so slightly, "Subtle, but no. Jack and I talked about it, to be sure. But with Ty, and the baby on the way, and Dad's cancer, it's just not the right time. Dr. Fraiser is going to take her until we can find qualified parents."

Daniel's heart jumps. Wait, _Janet_ is taking the kid? Temporarily, he reminds himself. It's always temporary; he should have learned that from his own childhood. "By qualified, you mean ones with the right security clearance." He says glibly, hoping that it will cover his internal turmoil.

"I wouldn't be surprised if Dr. Fraiser wants to keep her for herself. As long as Cassandra's happy," Sam says.

If Janet kept her, then Janet would have a kid. It might not matter anymore that he couldn't give her one. And he would have the chance to be involved in making this kid's life stable and good. He thought, maybe, he could remember all the things that would make her more comfortable. All the things he spent lonely nights longing for when he was a child.

"She appears to be happy," Teal'c says.

"And I wasn't completely at ease until I learned the object was shrinking and being reabsorbed into her system," Sam says.

Cassie come running up, "Sam, your dog is awesome!"

Sam smiles, "Well, it's not exactly my dog."

Cassie gets a little pensive then, "When you find me a new home, will you come and visit me?"

Sam grins at her, "You betcha. All the time."

Daniel longs for Cassie to ask him that question. He was there for her too. Not like Sam was, but that was the kid's choice, not his. That girl needs so much. Daniel discovers with surprise that he too has needs, bubbling under his surface. He needs someone to need him.


	26. Part 2 Chapter 20

**Two Days Later**

Cassie jumps way up in the air when the doorbell rings.

"It's ok, honey, that's just an Earth way of letting someone know that there is someone at the door." Janet peaks through the keyhole, and sees nothing but a giant teddy bear. "What is going on?" she mutters to herself.

She opens up the door, to see that Daniel is being smothered by the bear. "Ah, hi, Dr. Jackson."

"I, ah… brought something for Cassie, if that's ok."

"Sure. Come on in," Janet says, moving aside.

"Hey, Cassie," Daniel says, handing it to her.

"What am I supposed to do with that?" she asks.

"Hug it when you're having a bad day," Daniel says.

"Thanks," Cassie says.

"Ah… I also got you something else, I just don't want you to misunderstand it," Daniel says pulling in a colorful suitcase in from outside. "Cassie, when I was little, my parents died. And I grew up in foster care. I came from a different culture too, and then suddenly I was America-bound, and a little bit lost. And I got moved around a lot, and every time that I moved, I had to pack up my things in garbage bags. And it made me feel like I didn't belong. I couldn't stand the thought of that happening to you. So I got you suitcases, but then I started to worry that you were going to think they meant I wanted to you leave. I don't. I just want you to feel like you belong."

"I love the thought, Daniel, but that suitcase isn't going to be used for anything but vacations. Cassie and I are working toward adoption. George has been great about helping us cut through the paperwork."

He turns to her with eyes sparkling, "Adoption, really?"

"Yeah," Janet says.

"That is fabulous news," he says to Cassie.

She nods her head.

A buzzer goes off in the kitchen, "Earth is really loud," Cassie says.

"This one means dinner is ready," Janet says, walking into the kitchen.

"Oh, you guys were going to eat. I don't want to interrupt, I should probably go," Daniel mutters very slowly, waiting for someone to interrupt him.

Cassie obediently waits until he's done, and then says, "You should stay."

"Yeah?" he asks, glancing at the quickly-retreating form of Janet.

"Yes, Daniel, stay," Janet tells him.

**Two Days Later**

"Sweetie, dinner is ready," Janet says, standing at the doorway.

"I'm not hungry."

"Ok, well, why don't the two of us go draw?" Janet says, trying to bribe her daughter with her favorite activity.

Cassie continues to lay face down on the bed without moving.

"TV, then?"

Nothing.

"We could go shopping, and get more clothes."

Again, there is no response.

"We can call someone on the phone." Cassie viewed the phone as a magical way to contact people in other places. She'd been so fascinated that Janet had bought one for her room, even though she thought her daughter was far too young for her own phone.

Cassie just lays on her bed.

"Cassie, tell me what I can do to make it better," her mother pleads.

And she hears a sob.

Janet is starting to worry that she isn't really cut out for this whole motherhood thing. She should be able to fix this, to make it better. Her daughter is suffering, and she can't do anything about it.

The doorbell rings, and Janet sighs as she goes to get it.

"Daniel, well, I'm a lucky girl to get a personal appearance twice in one week."

"I just thought I'd check in, I know how the first couple of weeks in a new placement can be. How is she doing?" Daniel asks.

"Great," Janet smiles.

"Yeah?" he asks, looking at her critically.

"No, not really. She wouldn't get out of bed. I can't do this, Daniel."

"Janet, after my parents died, I would have killed for a mother like you. Can I see her?" he asks.

Janet nods.

Daniel runs up the steps and pauses when he sees a crushed little girl in bed. It's harder to be around someone that is broken than it is to be broken yourself.

He walks around to the bed, and gives her a weak smile, "Tough day, little one."

She doesn't say anything.

He bends down before her. "You know it's ok to be sad, right?"

She looks at him surprised.

"Yeah. Sadness, despair, happiness, anger, loneliness – they're all ok things to be feeling, honey."

She looks at him with surprise on her face.

"You want some company?"

Cassie nods her head and scoots over. Daniel climbs into bed, and pulls her into his arms. "You're not alone, Cassie. You're never alone," he tells her.

-0-0-0-

Cassie's eyes pop open in horror. There are Goa'ulds under her bed. She knows there are Goa'ulds under her bed. She's too scared to say in this room alone for one more minute. But if she puts her feet on the ground, they will get her. She'd die. She needs Janet, but she doesn't have a way to get her.

Then Cassie turns to phone. She can reach it without putting her feet on the ground. She turns the light on and fumbles for the numbers by the phone. Daniel, he'll find a way to save her.

"Daniel, you have to save me," she says.

"Cassie, is that you?" Daniel says in a startled voice.

"Daniel, please," she says sobbing.

"Cassie, what's wrong?" Daniel asks, imagining all kind of situations involving everything from the NID to invasion of the world.

"There are Goa'uld under my bed," Cassie informs Daniel.

"Honey, there aren't any Goa'uld under your bed," he assures her.

"But there are," Cassie sobs.

"Listen honey, you have to go get your mom. As soon as your mom is there, and the light is on, everything is going to seem a whole lot less scary."

"But if I go get Janet, the Goa'uld will get me," Cassie says.

"Ok, look, honey, here is what we are going to do. We're going to hang up the phone. Then I'm going to call again. You're going to let the phone ring. And then your mom is going to pick up, and I'm going to explain this to her, and she's going to come in there and help you."

"But if Janet comes in here, the Goa'uld will hurt her."

"Your mother? No way, she's the slayer of Goa'uld, babe. I promise everything is going to be ok."

"Ok," Cassie says softly.

The seconds before Janet picks up the phone are among the longest in Daniel's life. "Janet…"

"Daniel? It's two in the morning."

"I know, I'm sorry, it's just Cassie."

"Cassie?" Janet sits up in shock. "What do you mean?"

"Don't panic. She's safe, she's just terrified. She had a bad dream."

"How do you know my daughter had a bad dream?"

"She called me."

"She called you at two in the morning?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I should probably go…"

"Yeah."

-0-0-0-

"Cassie," Janet says, standing at the doorway to her daughter's room.

"Janet, careful, there are Goa'ulds everywhere!"

"No, there are no Goa'uld on Earth. You're safe," Janet says, crawling into bed with her daughter.

"There were no Goa'uld on my planet, either," Cassie sobs.

"Oh, God, Sweetie, I know," Janet says.

"Are you going to go die too, Janet?" Cassie asks.

"I'm going to do my best not to," Janet says gently.

"No," Cassie pleads, digging nails into her side.

"Honey," Janet says.

"No, you can't leave me, Janet. No," Cassie cries.

"Ok, I promise not to die until you're all grown up," Janet says, running her fingers though her daughter's hair.

"Promise?"

"Yeah, I promise."

There is a long moment of silence then Janet says, "Why did you call Daniel?"

"'Cause I couldn't call you," Cassie says. Janet's heart swells with the knowledge that her daughter did want her. She was never sure; Cassie didn't show affection easily. She'd been reading books, and that was typical for kids who have just lost their parents. But she still needs to know that she's doing good for her daughter.

"You know, you actually can call me from this phone, too," Janet says.

"Really?"

"Yeah, it's a little trick that most people don't know. If you call the number, and then hang up, it will ring. Then both of us can pick it up. So if you ever get scared in the middle of the night again, you can just do that, and I'll come."

Cassie nods her head.

"I'll always come for you, honey." Janet feels Cassie relax in her arms. "I love you, honey. Do you want me to stay?"

Cassie nods her head. Janet scooches over into a more comfortable position. "I love you, Janet," Cassie says not looking at her mom.

Janet's heart soars. She's said that to Cassie every day since Cassie came to live with her. But she's never gotten it in return, until now.

-0-0-0-

"Mommy and Daddy, Grandpa and I got you a present!" Ty says, running up to his parents as they walk through the door.

"Ah, and what is the surprise?" Jack asks, not really expecting an answer.

"A piece of paper," Ty says.

"Ah, and does this piece of paper have something written on it?" Sam asks with a smile.

Ty nods.

"And what does it say?" Jack prompts, enjoying the fact that Ty wasn't understanding his mother.

"Daddy, you know I can't read," Ty says.

Jacob comes up behind, and hands them an envelope. Sam opens it up, "Two tickets to Hawaii."

"You never got your honeymoon. I've already cleared the time off with George," Jacob says with a big grin.

"Dad, I really appreciate this, but it's too much," Sam says.

"Too much? We're family, Sam. And you guys have been amazing with me for a long time," Jacob protests.

"It's just not the right time," Jack protests.

"And what would make it the right time?"

"Sometime when I'm not huge with pregnancy," Jacks says.

"Hey, this would be a week break from my prosthetic stomach," Sam says.

"You don't want to do this because I'm sick," Jacob says.

"Jacob, that's not all of it."

"I got a clean bill of health," Jacob says with a grin.

"You're kidding?" Sam says.

Jacob shakes his head.

She pulls him into a hug, and makes a squeal.

"Done with chemo, eh?" Jack asks, joining the hug.

"Dad, I am so happy, but that doesn't mean we have go on a vacation," Sam says.

"You missed it because of me. I want you to have this," Jacob says. "I'll take care of the kid, and the pets."


	27. End Part 2

**A week Later**

"I refuse to wear a bathing suit," Jack says with a pout.

"Why not?" she asks.

"Classified."

"Oh, come on, no one is going to think you're pregnant. Jack, this is the swimsuit I brought along," Sam says, holding up a tiny bikini, "And the only way you're going to get me to shed my fake baby belly and put this on is if you don some trunks."

"Well, alright then," he says, grabbing his swim trunks and going to the bathroom, singing, "Itsy-bitsy teenie-weenie yellow polka-dot bikini".

Sam makes a quick change. Jack comes out of the bathroom, and looks at himself in the mirror. Sam comes up behind him, and wraps her arms around his stomach.

He pulls away.

"What's wrong now?" Sam whispers.

"It's just weird, you know," Jack whispers.

"I know. I remember when I was pregnant with Ty, I couldn't believe that there was a human inside of me. That I was capable of creating a human being. It's got to be much stranger for you. I mean, I knew my body could do that since I was young."

He shrugs.

"Jack, talk to me," she says, moving her hand up to her chest.

"It's nothing," he says quickly.

"But it is something, please share with me."

"I don't have a right to complain. I mean, you did this without me. And here I am, married to you. Getting support from someone who has already done this. Maybe those guys on that planet are right, that we can't really be equal until we share everything. But I can't help but wish that it was you instead of me," there are tears in his eyes as he ends this speech, and he really hopes that she is going to blame this on the hormones.

"So do I," she whispers, moving around him so they are facing each other.

"What?" he asks.

"I wish it was me, too. It's ok for you to be pissed about this. No one asked your permission on this. They altered your body so that you could have a baby without asking you. You have a right to be angry about this."

"You didn't really choose to have Ty either."

"I know, Ty was an accident. But this goes way beyond having an accident. If I woke up one morning with male reproductive organs, I wouldn't be entirely pleased."

"I know, Sam, but I don't even have to do labor. When this baby leaves me, it's not even going to hurt. How dare I wish pain on you?"

"You know, Jack, I don't think I've been fair to you. I've had these blinders on when it comes to pregnancy. I've been remembering all the things that I loved about it. You know… the connection that I felt to the baby. And the way that I had the right to eat whatever kind of food that I wanted. But I don't think I've been talking to you enough about the things I hated. I think part of the reason for that was I didn't want you to feel bad about not being there for me with Ty. But all it has done is made you feel like a bad father for hating the stuff that every pregnant person hates. I hated that I got tired so much faster than I did before I got pregnant. I hated the fact that I had to pee all the time. I hated the fact that I felt like an alien invader had taken over my body and my emotions."

"It is a little Goa'uld-like, now that I think about it," Jack says.

Sam glares.

He throws up his hands, and giggles, "Sorry, our baby is nothing like a Goa'uld."

"You got that right," Sam says.

"About that having to pee thing," he whispers.

**The Next Day**

Janet walks into Daniel's office, doing a pretty good impression of his insecure self-hug. "Dr. Jackson, may I have a word with you?" she asks.

Daniel looks up from his artifact with a wide grin on his face before he sees her facial expression. "Sure. Is Cassie ok?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. You seem to have a lot of interest in my daughter." The accusation in her eyes is beyond a doubt.

His mouth drops, and his stomach sinks at her words. He debates fleeing the room without saying another word. Then he could go somewhere to scream or to cry, he wasn't exactly sure which one he was more likely to do right now. But instead he decides to do something uncharacteristic for him, stand up for himself.

His voice is icy and even as he says, "I had these two foster sisters when I was a kid. Their dad did that to them, when they were, little maybe eight and six. It destroyed them. You have to know that if ANYONE tried to do that to Cassie I would kill them with my bare hands. I am _not_ attracted to little girls, Janet."

"Well, what am I supposed to think?" Janet accuses, "You seem to have no interest in me until I adopt a little girl. Then suddenly you're over at my place all the time, cuddling her in bed, and she's calling you in the middle of the night."

"She's scared, Janet. She's scared just like I was when I was her age. I'm trying to help her through this! And I liked you before you got Cassie. It's just… I didn't see it going anywhere until…"

"Until what?" Janet asks, searching his eyes.

"You left your husband because he didn't want to have kids. I couldn't give you kids. I thought maybe after you had a kid, it wouldn't have mattered as much," Daniel blurts out.

"Wait, what do you mean you can't have kids? I'm your doctor, and there is nothing in your file about infertility."

"Yeah, well it wouldn't be. There is nothing official. I mean, I've never been tested or anything."

"But you were married for a year," Janet says understanding.

"I already broke one woman's heart by not being able to give her the baby that she wanted. I was not about to do that again."

"Daniel, most couples do have a baby after a year of trying. But there could be a million other reasons that it didn't happen for you. I mean, it could have been Sha're. Or it could have been the fact that you were from different planets. Thousands of years' worth of totally separate evolution could have made you guys incompatible. I can arrange for you to have a test."

Daniel shifts on his feet, "I don't exactly have a reason to. I mean… I'm not planning on having any kids right now."

Janet smiles, "I know, but you _are_ making life decisions based on what might be faulty information. If you find out you can't, you're going to be fine. There are lots of ways to have a baby. And if you were really listening to me talk about my husband, you'd know the fact that he made decisions about our lives without including me. Kind of like you just did."

Daniel hangs his head with a quick smirk.

"I'm kind of hoping that you are able to have a baby, because a little kid with your genes would be pretty amazing. But I love my daughter, and if she's the only kid I ever have, I am going to be deliriously happy," Janet adds.

Daniel blushes.

"I'm sorry about what I said earlier," Janet presses.

"It's ok," Daniel says dismissively.

"No, it's really not. You let people off way to easily when they are cruel to you," she observes.

"I'm used to it," he confesses.

Janet smiles at him, "So, I'm going to make you an appointment with a friend of mine who works with fertility. And if you wanted to come over for supper with Cassie and I tonight, you could."

"I'd really like that," he says with a bashful smile.

Janet is almost out of the room before she returns for a little bit more honesty. "Ah… I have to be honest with you. I think what I said before… which is completely out of line. It might have been partly caused by the fact that I've been a little bit jealous of you."

"What?" Daniel asks.

"You're so good with her. You always do the right thing, and you say the right thing."

He laughs, "Janet, I've been watching you, and wishing that I could have had someone like you after my parents died. You are an amazing mother."

Janet bites her lips to keep the tears from coming.

"As long as you are loving her, that is all that she is going to need."

**That Night**

"Daniel!" Cassie says, flinging her arms around him as soon as he comes through the door.

He bends down on the floor with one knee, "Hey, little one, how are you?"

"Great! I painted a picture in school. I'll get it for you!" she exclaims, running out of the room.

Janet shakes her head at her retreating daughter, "I don't understand. I mean, some days she's withdrawn and crying. Other days she's cheerful, like nothing bad has ever happened to her."

"Yeah, that's pretty typical with kids. They don't grieve like adults," Daniel says.

"I really appreciate having someone here who has actually lived through this to help me out," Janet admits.

Just then Cassie comes back, waving a piece of artwork from her school, and both of the adults focus on her.

-0-0-0-

Daniel pokes his head under the bed again, "Nice and safe down here. Not so much as a dust bunny," he proclaims. "You ready for bed, little one?"

"Daniel, are you and Mom divorced?" Cassie asks.

He blinks at her in surprise, "No, what made you ask that?"

"My friend Crystal's parents are divorced. She lives with her mom, and her dad comes to visit her sometimes. That's kind of like mom and you."

Daniel smiles, "Well, honey, divorce means that you used to be married, and you stopped being married. Your mother and I have never been married," he pauses, "Well, I guess that's not quite true. Your mother and I have never been married to each other."

"Oh, that's too bad," Cassie pouts.

"Why is that?" he asks, sitting down on her bed.

"'Cause if you and mom were divorced, then you would be my dad. And the judge would make you see me all the time."

Daniel laughs a little, "Well, sweetie, no-one has to make me see you. I might not be your dad, but I'm going to keep coming around. Do you think you'd mind too much if I just stayed your Daniel for a while?"

Cassie shakes her head, "But maybe if I'm really good, you'll be my dad someday?"

He sighs. He remembers well that uncertain aching longing for family. "You don't have to be good to have a daddy, honey. Whether or not you have a father has nothing to do with whether or not you are a good girl. You are always a good girl."

Cassie nods, but still looks sad.

And then Daniel does something he knows is just a little bit unwise. "Ok, kid, how about this. How about I become your dad, right now?"

Cassie's eyes light up, and she grins.

"The catch is, you have to keep calling me Daniel."

"Can you live with us now?" Cassie asks.

"No, but I'll keep seeing you," he says.

"Ok," she says cheerfully.

"'Night," he says, kissing her on the forehead.

"I love you, Daniel," Cassie says quickly.

Daniel pauses in shock. When was the last time that someone said that to him? Daniel thinks back desperately. Sha're said it, of course, but that had been in a different language. Sara had never said it. His foster parents had said a lot of kind things, but he can't remember any of them actually confessing their love for him. He is pretty sure that the last time anyone has told him that they loved him was his own parents.

"I love you, too," he says with tears in his eyes.

He steps out into the hallway, and is surprised to see Janet standing there. "I'm sorry, that was probably out of line."

"She needed that," Janet whispers leading him away from her daughter's door, "If you were serious in what you said in there, you can have a permanent job as her father, no matter what happens with us."

Tears come to his eyes again, "Thank you," he whispers.

"You want a glass of wine?" she asks.

He smiles and nods bashfully.

"So, Daniel, I've heard some pretty wacky rumors about some theories you had before you joined us."

"God, what did they say?" Daniel says with his cheeks going red.

"Did you really say that the pyramids were landing pads for alien space crafts? I mean, you're not wrong, I just can't figure out how you would have reached that conclusion?"

Daniel rolls his eyes, "I didn't say that. A heckler at a conference said that, right before they all walked out. People have misquoted me on that at lot, to add to the public mockery."

"Ouch, what _did_ you say?"

"That the Egyptian pyramids, language, and culture is a lot older than we thought it was. And that it came from somewhere else," Daniel says, getting the glasses while Janet gets a bottle of wine out of the fridge.

"Not really that far away from alien spaceships, my dear," Janet says.

"Well, thank you for that," he teases, "Where is your corkscrew?"

She reaches over him to get one out of a drawer. "Hey, you were right about the aliens."

"I was thinking more like a human culture that wasn't big on monuments, actually," Daniel says, taking the screw driver away from her to open the bottle.

"So how did you know about the really old language?" she asks seriously.

"My mom was a linguist. She was the one who traced the transition from pictographic to phonetic Egyptian hieroglyphics. I watched her do it. And when I was an adult, looking at the Latin, the earliest hieroglyphics, even Babylonian cuneiform… I saw the same patterns she saw."

"Daniel… you are WAY too modest. You credit someone else every single time that you accomplish something."

"I do not," he says, handing her a wine glass.

"Daniel, repeat after me; 'I am awesome'."

He giggles.

"I am so not kidding."

"Janet, please," he says, shaking his head.

"I am awesome."

"Yes, you are."

"Say it, grave robber."

"Archeologist, grave robber, just a difference in time."

"You're not changing the subject on me. Say that you are amazing."

"I am just a normal guy."

"No, Daniel. You are a guy who knows dozens of languages. You're the guy who figured out the Stargate in a week when no-one else could figure it out in years. You're the guy who wrote a really amazing paper on the cross-pollination of ancient cultures that should have rocked the academic world. And you have just about every women on base, few though they are, salivating over you. You, sir, are amazing."

He blushes.

"I'm not going to give up until you say it," she grins at him as she takes her glass of wine over to the couch.

He sits on the other side of the couch, "You are deluded enough to think I'm awesome."

"I'll accept that for now," Janet says, moving closer to him on the couch, "I'm going to get you to say it someday."

"So, I gather you read my article, from what you said earlier?" he asks.

"Ah… yeah, after Hathor, I wondered what was out there that you wrote. I read them all."

"All?" he asks, glancing at her in shock.

She nods her head.

"God, you didn't find the one the published when I was fourteen, did you?"

"The one about King Tut, yeah?"

"I blame my peers, they should never have published that paper," Daniel says.

"It was good, sort of medical, right up my alley.'

"It was adolescent, and cliché. It was about King Tut, for God's sake."

"I don't know, your theory about the chariot race death was pretty interesting," Janet says.

"You are a suck up."

"You need to learn how to take a compliment."

"This is really good wine, it reminds me of the summer I spent in France."

"That's giving a compliment, not taking one."


	28. Part 3 Chapter 1

**One Week Later**

Daniel stands at the door to Janet's lab, crossing his arms across his stomach. "So, I got your e-mail that my results are in."

"Yeah," Janet says, shutting the door behind him, "Why don't you sit down?"

Daniel sits down, and immediately begins to fidget.

She smiles at him, "You are fine, Daniel."

He blinks at her, "You're sure?"

"Well, there is a slight mobility issue, but you can definitely have kids. It might be part of the reason why it took longer with Sha're, but probably wasn't the whole reason. Daniel, you can definitely have kids, given enough time."

**Two Weeks Later**

Major Boyd smiles as he watches his daughter, in a pink tutu, have a tea party with Sam and Ty. "It's nice for her to have some female influences. I mean, besides the nanny. Actually, Sam is a lot girlier than the nanny."

Jack laughs, "Well, that's a little ironic, because Ty is a lot girlier than Sam."

"You guys are great with kids," Major Boyd says a little mournfully.

"So are you," Jack defends.

"I'm not like you guys… I've seen you with them on the play dates; you get right in there, and join the game with them. I can't do that. I just… observe."

"You're a good dad," Jack assures the man before him.

"No, not really. If I was a good dad, I would quit my job. A single dad with no family support shouldn't work at such a dangerous job."

"The Stargate is quite addictive," Jack says.

"Listen, I want to ask you a question, and feel free to say no, but… I don't have any other options, and if anything ever happened to me…"

"You want us to take Emma," Jack says with a note of awe.

"I can understand, sir…" Boyd says.

"We'd be honored. I mean, I'd have to talk to my wife first, but we'd be honored. Of course, you're going to be fine, and never need us."

Boyd's eyes get wet, "I appreciate it."

"And now you and I are going to get in on this tea party," Jack says.

-0-0-0-

"Sam, we got asked a pretty important question today," Jack says as they climb into bed that night.

"Yeah?"

"Boyd asked us if we'd be willing to take Emma if anything ever happened to him."

"Us?" she asks with raised eyebrows.

He nods, "He said we're great parents."

Sam closes his eyes, "He doesn't know…"

"Oh, Sam, that wouldn't matter to him," Jack says.

"I'm not going to agree to take that man's baby girl unless he knows," she says.

"Ok, I'll talk to Boyd."

**The Next Day**

"So, is the secret out that I actually know where my office is?" Jack asks when Boyd appears before Jack's office.

"Only a few select people," he Major says with a smile. "So, did you get a chance to talk to Sam?"

"She was honored, but…" Jack starts to stay.

"Hey, man, you don't have to explain."

"No, she didn't say no, there is just something she wants you to know before we agree to this. When Ty was little, there was this thing with the nanny," Jack takes a deep breath, "The nanny was abusing and neglecting him. Sam was cleared of any wrongdoing, but she blames herself for not noticing. It's not going to happen again, Boyd. She doesn't let anyone watch Ty besides family."

"It wasn't her fault."

"I've been telling her that."

"I trust her with Emma. If I can't raise my daughter, there is no-one but the two of you that I would want to do that."

"Ok, then… start the paperwork."

"Really?"

"Yeah, man. But again, we're not going to need it."

**One Week Later**

"One more story, Daniel? About gods and demons?" Cassie pleads.

"Nice try, little one, but it was 'one more story' five stories ago," Janet says with a smile, "Bedtime."

"Night," Daniel says, kissing the girl's forehead.

"Another wine chat?" Janet asks when the girl's door is closed.

"I'd love it," Daniel says grinning at her.

"So, we've talked about our marriages, and our college experience, and _my_ childhood, but it seems like something is missing."

Daniel doesn't say anything.

"Daniel, was your childhood that bad?"

"I've talked a lot about my childhood, Janet."

"Yeah, with Cassie. I think it might be an edited version."

"My childhood wasn't awful," Daniel says, taking a much longer than usual sip of wine.

"But it wasn't great, either, was it?" Janet asks softly.

"Before my parents died… it was great. I was on digs with my parents all the time. My mom taught me language after language. My dad he taught me the tools, the theories, the history. I memorized all of the pharaohs in history."

"Including Tut, even though other pharaohs erased him from history?"

"Look who's been reading up on their Egyptian myths."

"With this job? Kind of a necessity," Janet smiles.

"So it has nothing to do with me?" Daniel says teasingly.

"So, your parents were a lot like you, they sound fantastic," Janet says, choosing to ignore his previous comment.

"I never really thought about it that way before," Daniel says.

"You never thought about how your archeologist and linguist parents were like you?"

Daniel takes a deep breath, "I wasn't like them when they were alive. I was a little rebel. I would read anything that didn't have to do with history. That was a bit of a challenge, because we only had a few books in our tent. But I'd get them from anywhere. And I used to love math."

"Math?" Janet asks with her eyebrows raise.

"Yeah."

"I've seen your checkbook," Janet says.

"Yeah, well record-keeping isn't exactly my thing. Man, I wonder what would have happened if they'd never died. I might not even be an archeologist."

"Well, whatever archeology lost, mathematics would have gained."

"I don't think I would have been a good mathematician."

"Which implies you are a good archeologist," Janet says.

"I never said that," he protests, "Besides, I'm not actually an archeologist anymore."

"Do you miss it?" she asks pulling her feet up under her, and leaning against him gently.

"Sometimes, yeah. But mostly I miss things that I never really had. I miss the respect of my peers."

"They're idiots," Janet says, kissing his cheek. He catches the side of the cheek with his fingers, and turns her toward himself, and then he kisses her.

**The Next Week**

"Hey, bud, are you playing with GI Joes?" Jack asks, sliding down on the floor to sit next to his son. Jack immediately regrets the decision. He's going to have trouble getting up, with his very tight and growing midsection.

"Yep," his son says cheerily as he smashes the faces of the GI Joe's together.

Ok, that had to be a mistake, Jack thinks to himself.

Then Ty mashes the faces together again. This time he holds them together for a while, and makes a smacking sound with his lips.

"Ah… what are you doing?" Jack asks, wondering if he doesn't really want an answer.

"They're kissing, Dad," Ty says.

"Right, of course," Jack says. He told Sam that he would be ok if Ty were gay, but he's finding that that might have been a lie. "Why are they kissing?" he asks.

"Because they're in love," Ty says, as if his father were dense.

"Right of course," Jack says. "Ty, do you want us to buy you… Barbies?" Jack never thought he would make a suggestion like that. But maybe if his son had some females in the mix, he wouldn't have males kissing.

"No, Barbies are lame," Ty says.

"No argument from me," Jack says.

"You want to play?" Ty asks happily.

Jack really doesn't want to play kissing boys with his son, but he doesn't see another choice. "Sure," he says.

"Here, you can have the Mommy doll," Ty says, handing his father one of the GI Joes.

"This is Mommy?" Jack asks, looking at the small masculine figure.

"Yep, and Mommy and Daddy are done kissing now. They're going to go save the world," Ty informs him.

Jack smiles, "Well, that sounds like a good plan to me son, how do we begin?"

**The Next Day**

"Hey, Ty, I got you a present," Jack says the next day when he comes home from work.

"What is it, Daddy?" he says running into the room.

Jack hands the bag over, and Ty unceremoniously rips into it. "Daddy, they make Mommy dolls!"

"They certainly do, son," Jack says, smiling at his son.

"You found a doll of me?" Sam asks, coming over. She looks at the female GI Joe in her son's hand.

"They aren't exactly easy to find, but yeah, he's been using his GI Joe's to act our life story. I thought maybe we could get one of the right gender."

"Thanks, Daddy," the boy says, flinging his arms around his father.


	29. Part 3 Chapter 2

**Two weeks Later**

"Sammy, the baby is coming," Jack says.

"You're sure?" Sam asks.

"There is a giant hole in my stomach, so yeah, I'm pretty sure."

"They said that it would take hours to develop the opening."

"Well, apparently a painless labor means that I missed that," he says, lifting up his shirt to show the opening at the top of his belly.

"Oh my gosh, we should be off-world by now," she says.

"We don't have time for that, just grab her!" Jack says looking into his open womb at his daughter. She looks up at him with a bemused smile on her face.

"I'm going to go wash my hands and get a towel, honey. You call Janet," she instructs, handing him the phone.

-0-0-0-

"Hey, baby girl," Sam says, pulling the infant out of her husband and wrapping her quickly in a towel.

"Why isn't she crying?" Jack asks with concern.

"I don't know. Her entrance into the world was much gentler than most babies. She's fine, though," Sam says, sitting down on the bed next to her husband and holding the baby.

"She's beautiful; she definitely looks like you," Jack says, smiling at his little girl.

Sam starts to cry.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Jack asks, concerned.

Sam leans against him, "Happy tears, the same thing happened when Ty was born."

"I wish I was there," he says.

"You're here for this one," Sam says.

"Thank god you were. It was a little scary," Jack confesses.

"I'm going to go wake up Dad. You alright?" she asks gently.

"Yeah. At some point, you're going to have to cut this umbilical cord."

"I'll start boiling water," Sam says.

"Really? I've heard that in shows forever, and I can't figure out what it's for," he says.

"Yeah, you can," she says with a smile, not buying his dumb act.

"Go sanitize us some scissors, babe," he says.

The baby starts to fuss, "Shh… baby girl, Mommy's coming back," he assures her.

-0-0-0-

Jacob walks into the room a few minutes later carrying a diaper and onesie. "Can't have a granddaughter of mine joining a nudist colony now can I?"

"Come see Little Miss Hannah," Jack says, holding the baby out to her grandfather.

"Oh, she's gorgeous," Jacob says, holding the baby up and putting a kiss on her cheek before laying her down on the towel to dress her in the diaper

"Was it really weird to give birth to her?" Jacob asks.

"I wouldn't exactly call it birth, and it was weird. But it was also really great," Jack says.

"Daddy?" Ty says, walking into the room, rubbing his eyes, "Is you sick?"

"Sorry we woke you, honey, your baby sister decided it was time to enter the world."

"Hannah came out of your belly?" Ty says, taking a tentative step closer.

"Yeah, come see her," Jacob invites.

Ty climbs up on the bed next to his father.

-0-0-0-

Janet walks into the room where Jack and his daughter are sleeping. Sam moves to wake her husband up, but Janet stays her hand. "I might be able to do this without waking him," Janet whispers, softly lifting the baby from his arms.

Jack startles awake. "How do you feel?" Janet asks.

He grins, "Great, did you see how beautiful that girl is?"

"She is," Janet says, giving him a smile, "Can you show me the hole in your stomach?"

"It's getting smaller," he defends.

She peers at it, before saying, "That it is. I brought the drink that's going to make your all of your female organs disappear within a week. At least, judging by what it did to the boys."

"Is Hannah ok?" Jack asks, taking the cup from her hand and taking a long sip out of it.

"She looks really good. I'm going to run some tests on her. You can go back to sleep now."

"Ok, doc," he says.

**One Week Later**

Janet walks into Daniel's lab, and he smiles, "Did you want to go to lunch?" he asks, standing up quickly.

"Sure, Sam and Cassie are having a girl's day sleep over."

Daniel smiles, "That sounds fun."

Janet honestly can't believe how clueless her genius is sometimes, "So, my house is going to be pretty empty that night."

"Ah… you need someone to scare the monsters away from under you bed, too?" he teases.

"Yep, I'm going to need my daring anthropologist."

"Ok, see you on Friday."

**Three Days Later**

Suddenly Daniel pushes away from Janet, "I'm sorry I can't do this. It's too soon after Sha're."

"Ok, well, I'm going to need some clarification. When you say 'this' do you mean us, or just sex?"

"Oh God, Janet," he says, putting his arm around her, "I mean sex _tonight_. You're going to have to work a lot harder than that to get rid of me."

"You want to stay anyway? It's not like we're going to have a bunch of chances to spend the night together."

"Yeah, sorry about that. I can see that you don't want to send your daughter off all the time," he teases, moving his hand down to hold hers.

"No, I don't," she says wistfully.

"We could just tell her that I'm sleeping over," he says hopefully. He really doesn't like being a secret.

"She is only a couple of years away from being a teenager. Do you really want me to give her the impression that it's ok to have sleepovers with boys?"

"God, no," he whispers, making a terrified face.

Janet giggles, "You've never thought of Cassie as being a teenager before, have you?"

"Nope, she's going to stay a little girl forever," he says firmly.

Janet shakes her head, "Nope, sorry, we've only got two years before she hits her teenager years."

"I'm a little worried about this," he mutters, motioning between the two of them.

"Why?"

"People I love don't exactly have the longest life expectancy," he whispers.

"None of that was your fault. You're too smart to believe in some sort of curse," she says.

"I sure hope it has nothing to do with me, because I couldn't stand losing you or Cassie."

Janet smiles at him, "We're going to be fine, and I love you, too."

"I didn't quite say that, did I?" he teases.

"Ah, I believe you did. It was called an inference," Janet teases back.

"Inference, assumption, wishful thinking, whatever," he says.

Janet tickles him until he blurts, "All right, I said I love you!" he yells.

"That's right, and you can keep saying it," she says.

He repeats the words, "I love you," over and over, in between kissing her on her face and neck.

The phone suddenly rings. Janet reaches over, and picks it up. "Cassie? What's wrong? No, sweetie, I'm fine. Do you want me to come get you? You're sure? Ok, you just needed to hear my voice. Ah… yeah, Daniel isn't home," she says, looking at him in horror. "He's just at work. Ah, no… sweetie, why don't you let me call him, and tell him to call you? Yeah, he's just not in his office tonight, but I'll get a hold of him. I'm sure he's fine. Ok, I love you, honey."

Janet hangs up the phone, and Daniel reaches for it over her.

"You'd better wait a bit, because it would take a while for me to call you."

"But she's scared," Daniel complains.

"Just a few minutes," Janet says, giving him a kiss to distract him.

**The Next Day**

Sam comes into Janet's office the next morning, and squeals in delight.

"What?" Janet asks.

"You and Daniel!" Sam says.

"How did you know?"

"I have caller ID, and last night Daniel was calling from your number after midnight. Don't worry, Cassie didn't notice."

Janet grins, and takes Sam into a hug.

"Why is this a big secret?" Sam asks confused.

"It's not really a secret, it's just… we haven't really defined what we are," Janet says.

"Well, considering the fact that he spent the night at your house, I could do some defining for you."

"Thanks," Janet says sarcastically.

"I'm happy for you guys. You both really deserve this," Sam says with a grin.

"He definitely does. I mean, he's lost his parents and his wife. And he is so great with Cassie."

"Is it serious?" Sam asks.

"I think so," Janet says.

**Two days later**

"Daniel, is something wrong?" Cassie asks as he pushes her on a swing.

"Yeah."

Cassie puts her feet down to look at him.

"It's ok, little one," he smiles at her, "I'm just trying to figure out how to ask your mom something."

Cassie springs up, and wraps her arms around his neck. "You're going to ask her to marry you!"

"W… What? No." Daniel stammers, putting the girl down.

Cassie's lip quivers, "Don't you want to be my Daddy?"

He kneels down next to her, "Remember, babe, I am already your dad, ok? I love you. Your mom and I are still pretty new."

"But you'll marry her someday?" Cassie asks.

"Maybe," Daniel says with a smirk, looking toward the bench where the woman in question is sitting.

"Yeah, you're going to marry her someday soon," Cassie declares.

"You guys ok?" Janet asks, walking toward them with a concerned look on her face.

"Yeah, Daniel just wants to ask you a question," Cassie says flippantly, running off to the slide.

Janet stands with her eyebrows raised.

"Not that question," Daniel says quickly, blushing.

"Ah… ok," Janet says, and he looks at her face quickly, trying to see what emotions are playing on it.

"Cassie's birthday is coming up pretty soon," he fidgets.

"It is," Janet says, somewhat impressed that he had apparently committed the date into memory after hearing it only one time.

"I wanted to ask your permission on a present to give her," he says, his arms quickly crossing over his body insecurely, "I wanted to give her a chance to use those suitcases."

"And you're asking my permission after you told her?" Janet says, nodding her head toward her excited daughter.

"No, I would never do that. She thought… I was asking a different question," Daniel mutters.

"I see," Janet says, and then falls silent for a second, studying his face. His face goes red under the scrutiny. "If you ever decide to ask that question… at some point down the road, I'm going to need to know you're not just asking because Cassie wants you to," she says, looking away from him.

"If I was asking for Cassie, I would have done it. I'm waiting until this is right for all of us," he says, flashing her a smile.

She grins back at him, "So where do you want to take my daughter?"

"I want to take you, too. I was invited to an archeology conference. But I was thinking you guys could come down with me. I know that sounds boring, but you can go do your own thing when I'm at the conference. I was planning on staying a couple of extra days after the conference. It's only a half hour from Disneyworld."

Janet smile at him, "You got invited to a conference? It's been awhile, hasn't it?"

"Not really. I was invited to speak at the last one. Of course, the conference hall was full when I started and empty when I ended."

"Still, that was two years ago," Janet says.

Daniel nods.

"So I'm eye candy?" she asks.

"You're a lot more than eye candy," he protests.

"Don't get me wrong, dear, I like being eye candy."

"You're brain candy, too," he says with a grin. Janet feels quite pleased with herself, she taught the anthropologist to flirt.

"So, as a mom, I have to ask what your motive is in bringing Cassie? Is it about her? Or you? I don't want my daughter to be a price." she asks softly.

"I think it is time that she sees more of Earth than this town," Daniel says, watching her swing form the monkey bars. "You guys will have your own room, and I'll find somewhere with a pool. You guys certainly won't have to spend a whole bunch of time in boring lecture halls or anything."

Janet smiles, putting his hand into hers, "One room is fine. Cassie and I can share a bed. And we're going to go with you to at least some of the lectures."

"When are we going to tell her?" Daniel asks.

"Go ahead," Janet says, nudging him toward her daughter.


	30. Part 3 Chapter 4

"O'Neill, General Hammond has cleared me to see part of your world, provided I can secure a fellow member of Stargate Command as an escort," Teal'c says.

"Yeah? It's about time, where do you want to go with me?" Jack asks with a wide grin.

"I have a selection of cultural experiences I would like to partake in," Teal'c says, holding up a note.

"Museum, church, a _school board meeting_?"

"I wish to experience all vital aspects of your culture," Teal'c replies.

"I wouldn't call any of these vital aspects. Why don't we go to a movie or a national park?"

"I have seen many movies on your television. And I have seen the wonders of many worlds."

"Ok, true, but these things are all boring."

"If you do not wish to accompany me, O'Neill, I shall wait for Daniel Jackson to return."

"No, that's ok, we'll go out today and experience culture. I did promise you that I would show you my culture."

"I am especially interested in experiencing the worship of gods which are no Goa'uld," Teal'c says.

"Well, that I can understand," Jack says.

**The Next Day**

"I hope you didn't mind that I brought along Ty. He, too, wants to participate in this cultural experience," Jack says, as he pulls up to the gate where Teal'c is waiting for him.

Teal'c nods his head slowly, and gets into the passenger seat.

"I read the Bible in preparation for this event, is anything else required?"

Jack's jaw drops, "You read the entire Bible?"

"Indeed."

"You're going to be fine, most of the people in the church probably haven't even done that."

-0-0-0-

By the time they arrive at church, there are only a few minutes left before the service starts. They slide into a seat next to a young women. She shoots them a grin. Then everyone stands to begin the first song.

After the first song the pastor talks for a little bit, and then all the people in the church start shaking hands with one another. The girl sitting next to the SG-1, contingent moves over quickly, and extends her hands to Teal'c.

"Hi, I'm Shelby," she says.

"I am Teal'c," he replies.

"Interesting name. I've never heard it before"

"My name is a synonym for strength," Teal'c replies.

"It fits you," she says with a nod of her head.

"Jack O'Neill," Jack stays extending his hand.

"Nice to meet you," Shelby replies. "And who is this little one?"

"I'm Ty, and I've got a baby sister," he announces.

"You do, huh?" she asks.

"Yep, but she stayed at home with Grandpa 'cause she's a baby, and babies can't be good in church. Daddy doesn't think I can be good in church either, but he's wrong. Don't you think so?" Ty asks, showing a bit of insecurity at the end.

"See, I don't know you yet, kid. You're going to have to prove to me that you are old enough to be a good kid in church."

Just then the pastor begins speaking again, and the conversation falls silent.

-0-0-0-

"So, are you going to the fellowship afterword?" Shelby asks, once the final song has been sung.

"Ah… I don't think so, Teal'c has a pretty big list of things we're supposed to be doing, and we just didn't get very many of them done yesterday," Jack says.

"O'Neill, is this not part of the cultural experience?" Teal'c asks.

"Right, let's go eat," Jack says.

"Food? Do they have cake?" Ty asks.

"I don't know, bud, but it's only ten o'clock in the morning. I'm pretty sure you aren't having cake."

"But Daddy, I was really good in church," Ty whines.

"It's true, you were, but there isn't going to be any cake. There will, however, be caramel rolls, which are a totally legitimate breakfast food," Shelby says, with a grin toward the boys.

"Caramel rolls? That's one of Teal'c's favorite foods from the mess," Jack says.

"Ah, so you guys are Air Force. I can see that."

"I am not a part of your Air Force," Teal'c replies.

"Teal'c is a consultant with us, he's not from America," Jack explains, giving the man in question a glare for the amount of information that he is revealing.

By now the group is filling their plates up with the pot luck brunch. "So what do you do for a living?"

"Well, I guess that depends on the time of day. I am an RA for my building, and I waitress at a dive diner, and of course I'm in college."

"What's your major?" he asks.

"I was unaware that individuals not affiliated with the military have rank," Teal'c says in confusion.

"No, it's a different kind of major, Teal'c. It means what she's studying in college."

"Nursing," Shelby replies.

"Emma's mommy was a nurse, but she lefted Emma," Ty replies.

"Oh, that's horrible, is Emma your sister?" Shelby asks.

"No, she's my friend from daycare. But I don't go to day care 'more 'cause Grandpa isn't sick. So now she's just my friend," Ty replies.

The group sits down at one of their tables. "So what country are you from?" Shelby asks.

"Chulak," Teal'c replies.

Jack shoots him a glare.

"Do you consider yourself an expert on this religion?" Teal'c asks abruptly.

"Expert? No, but I know as much as the next person," she reveals.

"May I ask you some questions about the inconsistencies in this book?"

"Sure, but you know it's not really about the inconsistencies, it's about the story, and it's about the love," she explains.

"I am intrigued by the concept of a loving god," Teal'c says, looking seriously at the young women. "Where I come from, the gods show no mercy."

"What is your religious background?" she asks.

"I used to be in service of Apophis."

"Apophis, like the Egyptian god? I wasn't aware that people still worshipped him. And what does it mean, that you were in his service? Were you like a priest, or something?"

"You know what, Teal'c, I just remembered you were due back on base," Jack says.

"You previously informed me that we were going to teach me to skate," Teal'c says quickly.

"Another time," Jack says, lifting his son away from the half-finished plate and making for the door.

"Will you come again?" Shelby asks Teal'c.

"Indeed," he says, bowing low to her before Jack grabs him by the elbow to force him out of the building.

Once they are in the parking lot Jack hisses, "What the hell was that?"

"I believe that was a worships service dedicated to the benevolent god, Yahweh."

"I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the giant leak you had going on there," he says.

"I did not notice the presence of any water, O'Neill," Teal'c replies, sans facial expression.

"You had a bit of on honesty problem back there didn't you? Chulak? Apophis? What were you going to tell her next, the fact that you were an alien?"

"I do not understand why honesty is a bad thing."

"You just can't tell them anything classified," Jack says, jumping open the doors to the pick-up.

"O'Neill, is my whole life classified?" Teal'c asks.

Jack pauses, and sighs before he says, "Yeah, bud, pretty much."

-0-0-0-

"Pssst, Daniel!" Cassie whispers, as she sits next to her father-figure in a crowded auditorium.

He leans his ear now so he can hear what she whispers to him.

"He's telling a lie," she whispers, "Nirrti isn't an Indian goddess, she's a Goa'uld."

"I know that, but they don't," Daniel whispers back.

"You should tell them," she says.

"Remember, the Stargate is a secret," Daniel whispers back.

"But they are making her sound like she's such a good person," Cassie says in a whining voice.

"Do you want to go outside?"

Cassie shakes her head, her eyes suddenly brightening, "There really is a world untouched by the Goa'uld."

Daniel nods her head, "And maybe one day there will be a whole universe that is free of the Goa'uld."

**The Next Day**

Cassie grips Daniel's hand as they stand in line for the Dumbo ride. She lets out a deep sigh.

"What's wrong, little one?" he asks, expecting an answer that has something to do with having to go to the bathroom, or being hungry.

Instead she says, "Can we go home yet?"

"Home? You want to go home?" he asks in shock. "You do realize that we are in Disneyworld, every little kid's dream, right?"

"Every kid from… you know, America," she says, catching herself just before she said Earth.

"But you love Disney movies."

"Sure, movies, when everything stays on a nice little TV screen, and you don't have to wait hours on black ground in the scorching sun to ride on things that make your stomach hurt."

"Cassie, we've been here four hours, why didn't you say something sooner?" he asks, bending down in front of her.

"You were so excited," she says simply, "But now the heat is starting to give me a headache as well as the rides giving me a stomachache. I don't think it gets this hot where I am from."

He picks her up, and starts walking backward out of the line, "Tell me if you don't want to do this, because we can just go sit in the hotel room if you want. But I know of a couple of really good museums in the area."

Her head perks up from his shoulder, over which it was drooped, "Seriously? There are museums in other places besides just Denver?"

"There are museums all over the world, darling," he says.

"And they have the special cool air don't they?"

"I'm sure they do, love."

"And do they have ice cream?"

"How about we get ice cream here before we leave."

"Is there going to be a really big line for it?" she asks with a skeptical frown.

"Strangely, no, the food lines are much shorter than the lines for the rides."

"Ok, then," she says, grinning as they approach the bench where Janet was waiting for them. "Mom, I hate Disneyworld, but it's ok, because there are museums in Florida!"

Everyone within ear shot turns to stare at the little girl with confused looks on their faces.

"My dear, sometimes I think you are Daniel's kid far more than you are mine," she says, taking the child from his arms into her own.

**Six Days Later**

"O'Neill, would you not accompany me to a religious service this weekend?" Teal'c asks.

"You want to go to church again? This wouldn't have anything to do with a certain blond would it?"

"Shelby was most helpful in my quest to understand Earth culture," he replies.

"Ok, sure, as long as that is all that is, because you have to have what, thirty years on her?"

"I believe the number to be closer to fifty years."

"Fifty years? Really, you're over seventy?" Jack asks in shock.

"Indeed."

"Wow," Jack says with raised eyebrows, "Ok, off to church we go."

**The Next Day**

"You have injured yourself," Teal'c says, as he shakes Shelby's hand during the church service the next day.

"It's nothing," she says, trying to pull her short sleeves over large and four-appendaged bruise just before her elbow.

"It is a substantial injury," Teal'c insists.

"I just ran into a wall," Shelby says.

"Don't you mean a door?" Jack asks, with sarcasm obvious in his voice.

"I believe this injury was caused by a human hand," Teal'c says, looking at Shelby.

"I'm just clumsy," Shelby says, taking a few steps away from them in the pew, sitting down, and staring at the front of the church, even though the pastor is still shaking hands in the third row.

Teal'c is undeterred by this. He sits down next to her, and says, "I will seek revenge on whoever has injured you."

"I've got this," she says.

"If you did not require assistance, you would not have been injured."

"I injured them back, ok? I'm fine," she says.

Jack scoots over next to the two of them, and is suddenly glad that Ty didn't want to wake up this morning for the church service. "Come on, Teal'c is a seriously scary. One look at him, and whoever did this to you is never going to hurt you again."

"I was my fault, I was dumb enough to go home. My mom gave me some crap about how everything is good. They're both sober, and she's my mom you know. I haven't seen here in years. But as long as she chooses to live with that ass, she is going to stay out of my life," Shelby says.

"You should file charges," Jack says.

"Oh, the cops know enough about him. I was emancipated at sixteen, and I told them all this stuff then. I just don't want to go through telling them all of this again."

A song starts, and the conversation ends.


	31. Part 3 Chapter 5

**The Next Day**

"Janet, do you want to go to lunch with me today?" Daniel asks early in the morning, standing awkwardly in the doorway to her office.

"Sure," she says with a smile.

"You know, like, maybe at my apartment," he prompts.

"Do you have food there?" Janet asks skeptically.

"Yeah, I have food," he fidgets, "But I was thinking maybe we could, ah… Cassie is going to be at school," he blurts.

Janet smiles at him, "Are you sure you're ready? We can wait as long as we need to."

He walks in and shuts the door behind him. "I love you, Janet. You make me happy, and I feel so guilty about that. But Sha're told me that she wanted me to be happy. And if I were the one that died instead of her, I would be pissed if she kept herself from happiness because of me."

Janet just nods her head.

"I'm ready," he says confidently.

"Ok, you're going to pick me up eleven-ish?"

Daniel smiles and nods his head. His hand goes so far as touching the door handle before he suddenly turns around and takes a rapid step toward her. Between the length of his legs, and the smallness of her office, he is right in front of her. He gives her a quick but romantic kiss.

-0-0-0-

Sam sits up with a start when she hears her daughter crying in the middle of the night. "I've got her," Jack says quickly, moving to get his daughter.

When he comes back into the room a few minutes later, Sam is crying. "Oh, no, what is wrong?" Jack asks quickly.

"Nothing," she says, taking the baby out of his arms and moving her shirt so she can start breastfeeding.

"Samantha, don't lie to me," he says, sitting down next to her on the bed.

"You weren't there with Ty. When he cried in the middle of the night, it was all me. I lived with my dad the first couple of months, but he didn't usually hear the baby in the middle of the night. I was all alone."

"I'm sorry," Jack says softly.

"I'm not blaming you," Sam protests.

"I know, but it's not right that you had to do this alone the first time."

"It's also not right that you missed so much time with your son," Sam says.

Jack shrugs. He knows that, but he knows Sam feels guilty about it and him agreeing won't help.

"Let's just make a deal to focus on the present and the future," Sam says, rubbing the tiny baby's back. Hannah pulls away from her mother, and lets out a giant burp, causing both of her parents to laugh.

**Six Days Later**

"Thank you for accompanying me to this religious festival, Samantha Carter," Teal'c says as the two of them walk into church.

"No problem. I actually petitioned you to be allowed off base by yourself. I haven't heard back on that yet though."

He nods his head.

"You have a different babysitter this week," Shelby says cheerfully as they take their place in the pew.

"This is O'Neill's wife, Samantha Carter," he replies.

"I hear you've got a new baby at home," Shelby says.

Sam grins, "She's a sweetheart."

"I assume you have pictures," Shelby gushes.

"Of course," Sam says, reaching into her purse.

-0-0-0-

As they're singing, suddenly Shelby sits down. She leans against the pew, and holds her head.

"What has happened?" Teal'c asks sitting down next to her.

Sam looks into the girl's eyes, and sees what she missed with her son. "When is the last time you ate?"

"I'm fine," Shelby says.

Samantha Carter is a mother, so she always has food on her. She pulls a granola bar out of her purse, and hands it to her.

"I'm fine," she repeats sternly.

"Eat it, honey," Sam says, moving over to the other side of the pew so she's sitting next to her.

"Are you not receiving the sustenance you require to survive?" Teal'c asks with concern.

"Look, its fine. I don't need you pity, and I don't need your food. My little sisters are still living with my mom. Mom doesn't keep around that much food. So I bring them food from my meal plan when I can. It ran out a couple of weeks ago. The new semester is starting soon and I'm going to be fine."

"Look, sweetie, I get the pride thing. And I definitely get the depriving yourself to help others thing. But I wouldn't offer you help unless I could really offer the help."

"Thanks," Shelby says, hiding the granola bar in her hand and taking furtive bites of it, much like Cassie did with a hot dog when they first found the little girl.

"Major Carter, would you be willing to loan me money? O'Neill has secured all of my income from the Air Force in one of your financial institutions."

"Of course," Sam says, at the same time that Shelby says, "I don't need nothin'."

"When I was a child, my father was dishonored and killed for failing to win an unwinnable battle. My mother and I were sent into another country without any resources. There were many times when I did not have the sustenance that is necessary to survive. When I was offered food, I did not refuse it."

Sam nods. "After church, I am going to take you out to eat, and then we are going to go grocery shopping."

"But there is no reason for you to feel sorry for me," Shelby says out of the corner of her eyes.

"Why would I feel sorry for someone who demonstrates such strength, courage, and compassion?" Teal'c asks.

"Oh, you talk so good," Shelby says with a sultry smile as the church service begins.

-0-0-0-

"You are supposed to take off your hat when you eat," Shelby says.

"I have been instructed never to take off my hat when I am in public," Teal'c replies.

"Man, they have you on a pretty short leash," Shelby says.

"No-one has bound me," Teal'c says, looking at her with a confused expression on his face.

Shelby laughs before she says, "No, man, that's like a figure of speech. It means that they don't let you do many things."

"I have applied for asylum in your country. I feel fortunate that they have allowed me to leave the base. It was a year before I earned that privilege."

"A year, they kept you in prison for a year? Dude, seriously, what did you do?"

"It was not prison, and I was a warrior for their enemy," Teal'c replies.

"What enemy? The cold war is over, and we're not at war with anyone."*

"I have been instructed not to lie to you, and yet there are many things which I am not at liberty to disclose to you."

"Gotcha, you can just stay silent instead of lying, you're really good at staying silent."

"That he is," Sam interjects with a giggle. She's been silent for much of the discussion, trying to be the least intrusive chaperone that she can be.

"So I take it you were involved in fighting some war, probably in Africa, that America is involved in, but doesn't claim to be involved in," Shelby says.

Teal'c nods his head.

"Sudan," Shelby guesses.

"I believed that warriors of that renown could only exist in legend."

"The Sodan? Warriors of renown? They force children to rape and murder their family members!" Shelby hisses with horror.

Teal'c pauses, "We apparently speak of different warriors."

"I should hope so," Shelby says, crossing her arms before her. Just then, the waitress brings up two giant plates of food, and a reasonable-sized salad. Sam digs into her salad while Teal'c and Shelby start shoveling food into their mouths.

**A Week Later**

When Sam picks up Ty from Emma's house one night, she sees him pouting.

"Honey, what's wrong?" she asks as she buckles him into his car seat.

"Mommy, am I stupid?"

"Of course not. Who said that?"

"No-one, but when you are four years old you are supposed to go to preschool. Emma is going to preschool, and a lot of other kids have left day care, or are going to day care once in a while. But I've been four for a couple of months, and I'm not in day care yet."

"Honey, that's not because you're stupid, it's because you're so smart that you don't need preschool," Sam says quickly, closing the door and going back to her seat of the car.

"Mommy, I'm still not going to get to see Emma very much," Ty says mournfully.

"I'm sorry, kid," Sam says, looking into the mirror and seeing the face that she knows is going to be hard to deny.

"Can't I go to preschool even if I don't need it?" Ty asks.

Sam wasn't planning on sending her son to preschool. It was, after all, optional. And she figured it would be a little bit longer before she had to deal with strangers caring for her son without video cameras involved.

"Dad and I are going to talk about it," she promises.

-0-0-0-

"Jack, your son wants to go to preschool," Sam says carefully later that night.

"Ok, and how to you feel about it?" Jack asks carefully.

"I don't trust them, I don't trust anyone with him but family," Sam says.

"That's not true, we've left him off at Boyd's house."

"I know," she says softly.

"And next year he's going to have to go to school."

"We could homeschool him?" Sam asks hopefully.

"We're not going to make that decision based on your fear. If that's what is best for Ty, fine; otherwise, no," he says.

"He deserves to go to school," Sam says softly.

Jack pulls her into a tight hug. "I'll make sure they have background checks."

She smiles at him.

"Maybe we can get him to wear a wire," Jack teases.

Sam glares at him.

"I promise, it is going to be ok."

"Let's see if we can get him into the same preschool that Emma goes to. Those two act like they are attached at the hip."

"Do you think that that is where Ty gets his frilly dress obsession from?" Jack asks.

"Oh, yeah, one of them is the exact same," Sam says.

"What do you think the chances are that Ty will outgrow the cross-dressing phase before he enters preschool?" Jack asks hopefully.

"Not very good," she says with a smile.

***This was before September 11, and the resulting wars.**


	32. Part 3 Chapter 6

**Spoilers for "Gamekeeper" and "Need"**

**Two Weeks Later**

"Mom, did you and Daniel have a fight?" Cassie asks tentatively.

"No sweetie, what makes you ask that?" Janet asks.

"He hasn't been over to our house in weeks. If he isn't mad at you, he must be mad at me."

"No, I'm sure that's not it," Janet assures her.

"There is a daddy-daughter dance, and I know he's not really my dad…" Cassie begins.

"Do you want to ask him, or should I?" Janet asks.

"You can," Cassie says bashfully.

**The Next Day**

"What the hell is going on?" Janet asks as she marches into Daniel's office.

He blinks at her.

"Listen, I don't know exactly what happened between the two of us, but I get that you don't want to be together anymore. Fine. It would have been nice if you actually told me that. But here is the deal, you told my daughter that you were her father. And that, my friend, is a forever kind of job. So even if you want out of my life you can't get out of hers."

His bushy eyebrows raise far above his glasses, "You think I want to break up with you?"

"What am I supposed to think? You're usually at my house most of the days that you're on-world. Then suddenly we don't see hide nor tail of you for two weeks, and you've got my daughter wondering what she did wrong. She did nothing wrong, except asking the wrong person to be her surrogate father."

"I'm not very good at this," Daniel says softly.

"You're not very good at this?" Janet repeats incredulously.

"I get distracted, by the work. It was a really important translation, and I've slept here all week, studying it."

The anger goes out of Janet, and she deflates. "And you couldn't have picked up the phone to tell me this?"

"I told you I'm not very good at this. I will try to be better. But you're right, Cassie deserves better, and so do you. Pretty much everyone that I've ever been with left me because I am such a workaholic. I won't blame you if you do too," he says, looking at his feet.

Janet walks toward him, and sets his face on fire by putting her hand on it. "You don't want me to go, do you?"

He shakes his head, which results in him rubbing it against her hand.

"Ok, then I'm just going to have to accept you just as you are," she says with a smile.

"You guys are more important to me than the work is, and I'm going to work on showing you this with my actions."

Janet nods, "And you're going to have to explain this to Cassie in a way that she understands."

"I'll try my best," he promises.

"I have a way you can start showing her how important you are to her right now. She has a daddy-daughter dance next week that she would love for you to go to."

"She really wants me?" Daniel asks with a wide grin.

Janet nods her head, "She loves you."

"It's mutual," he grins.

Janet turns to leave, but quickly runs over to his counter and grabs the coffee maker off of it.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Daniel protests.

"As your doctor, I either have to take your coffee maker or give you a lecture about the importance of sleep."

"Lecture," he says, grabbing for the coffee maker.

"Well, the eagerness with which you choose that option tells me the lecture isn't going to be very effective," she says, pulling the coffee maker away.

"I'll come over to your house tonight."

"You should probably get some sleep, you can come over tomorrow."

"I'm not going to let that little girl think that I don't like her for a single second. Not if I can prevent it," Daniel argues.

**The Next Week**

"Bye, Mommy!" Ty says, giving his mother a quick kiss before he runs into the preschool. "Emma!" he exclaims.

"Nice to see you again, Mrs. Carter," the teacher says with a quick wave. Clearly, Sam is supposed to move on, but how exactly is she supposed to leave her baby boy?

She knows these people, and had background checks done on them. There are all these other kids here, and they are all very verbal. If something went wrong this time, Ty would be able to tell her. But she just can't leave him. She stands locked in the doorway, knowing that what she's doing, or rather isn't doing, is crazy.

"Are you having a bit of trouble letting go?" the teacher asks.

Sam nods her head.

"That's perfectly normal. If you'd like to stay for a bit the first day, that is fine," the teacher says.

"Thank you," Sam replies, but she knows that what she is feeling is far from perfectly normal. She knows that she shouldn't stay, that it's only go to make it harder when she does eventually leave. But as soon as the teacher told her that she could stay, the relief that flowed through her body was unbelievable.

-0-0-0-

Ty comes and sits down next to his mother, and runs a toy car across his own leg. "What's wrong, baby?" Sam asks, putting her arm around him.

"You seemed sad," Ty says.

Sam's heart shatters into a million pieces. Her son really needs to stop suffering because of her fear.

"I'm not sad. Why would I be sad, just because my son is growing up? Growing up is a good thing. I'm going to get going; I'll see you in a couple of hours when preschool gets done, ok?"

"Ok, Mommy," he says with a grin.

She leans forward and kisses his forehead. She is glad that the abuse didn't scar her son as deeply as it scared her.

**A few Days Later**

"Janet, I'm not going to be coming over tonight like we planned. I'd like to talk to Cassie and explain to her why."

"Sure, no problem. Would you mind explaining it to me first?" Janet asks playfully.

"You know about the mission I was just on, right?" Daniel asks carefully.

Janet nods her head, "Yeah, at little. You were trapped in a video game that forced you to relive parts of your life."

"I was stuck watching my parents die again and again," he says mournfully.

"Oh, Daniel, I'm so sorry."

"Right, well you can see that I wouldn't be very good company tonight."

"Daniel," Janet says in awe, surprised that after all of this time that he understands her so little. "You don't come over to entertain us. We spend time together so that we can help each other. Daniel, you shouldn't be alone tonight."

"Janet, if it was just you, I'd agree. But I can't let Cassie see me like this."

"Like what, Daniel? Grieving for your parents? Haven't you seen her like that a few times? I think this is going to be a good thing for her. If you don't agree to come over, we're going to invade your apartment."

"Well, I guess I'm going to have to come over. Otherwise, we'd have to explain the presence of your bra."

"That's where I left it!" Janet exclaims.

"Where else would it have been?" Daniel asks with alarm.

"I thought it was in my locker at work."

"And you thought you left work without a bra?" Daniel asks in surprise.

Janet laughs, "Ok, I should have known where it was."

"You'd better," he grins to her on the phone.

-0-0-0-

As soon as Daniel walks through the door Cassie wraps her arms around him. "I'm sorry about your parents," she whispers.

"Thanks," he says, choking back tears.

She looks up at him, "You told me that it was ok to cry."

"I know, but there were a lot of people when I was a little boy that told me it wasn't ok to cry," Daniel says carefully, not entirely sure that this is something that he wants the girl to know about him.

Cassie turns to her mother a little uncertainly, "They were wrong though, mom, weren't they?"

Janet nods her head, locking her eyes on Daniel's above her daughter's head, "They were wrong, honey. But Daniel is so lucky that he is with us now. He's safe, and he can do whatever he needs to do. We're going to love him anyway."

Cassie nods her head, and Daniel's crying starts in earnest.

**Two Week Later**

"I have to go back," Daniel says with crazed eyes.

"You can't," Janet says, trying to school her face not to show how deeply Daniel has wounded her. He wants to go back to another women. And he's telling her this, and doesn't even care.

She knows that she shouldn't blame him. He's high, out of his mind, he doesn't know what he's saying. He doesn't know what he's saying because of the drugs that women gave him. And she is not going to let the man that he loves go back to her.

"You're killing me! Don't you understand? You're killing me!" he shouts.

"No, you're going to be fine. You're getting better, the worst is over," she assures him. She'd worked in a detox clinic once when she was still in medical school. She never thought she would be going through this on a more personal basis.

"You're just jealous," he bursts out.

"No, sweetie," she says with power which belies the gentle words. Then the words turn to match the power behind them, "I'm trying to protect you from a bitch who screwed with your brain chemistry!"

Daniel jumps up from the chair, the restraints that they used to tie him apparently being no challenge for him at all. He pushes past Janet, slamming her arm into wall on his way out of the room. Pain radiates through her arm, letting Janet know that something is wrong; the arm might even be broken. Janet drags herself over to the alarm to set it off, all the while in shock that Daniel, her Daniel, could do this to her.

**Two Days Later**

"I have to go back," he tells her. It shatters her heart into a million tiny pieces. He's not high now. He's sane and he's healthy. And he's asking her to let him go to another woman. What right does she have to refuse him? It's not as if she has any true ownership over him. At least, no ownership except for the fact that she is in love with him.

"What am I supposed to tell Cassie?" she says, grieving the fact that her heart isn't going to be the only one whose heart breaks in this situation.

"Tell her I'll see her tomorrow, and that I'm better. I mean… I guess I don't know what you told her about when I was detoxing, but I'm guessing you had to tell her something.

"You're going to be back tomorrow?" Janet says in confusion.

He looks at her in surprise, tilting his head toward her, "Janet, you thought I was going to leave you for her?"

Janet bursts into tears. He gathers her up into her arms. "What was I supposed to think? You were engaged to her!" she exclaims.

"Oh, not really, Janet. What happened with that woman was no more voluntary than what happened with Hathor."

Janet recoils in horror. She knew that Daniel was engaged to the women, but until that very moment she had not actually considered that he might be involved in a sexual relationship with her.

"The two of you…" she stammers, not quite willing to ask the question that is on her mind.

"No," he says shaking his head, "To be honest, I think Shaya was more interested in a co-ruler than a husband. Thank goodness. But she did still use drugs to make me stay. I can't believe my team was being worked to death in the mine and I did nothing to stop it."

"Like you said, it wasn't really you," Janet says.

"And I really can't believe I broke your arm," he says tenderly, touching the brace that is over her wrist.

"It's not broken, it's just a sprain, this is coming off in a couple of days," she says softly.

There is a moment of silence, and her eyes met his blue orbs. His eyes are filled with more sadness than she's ever seen. "Growing up as a foster kid, I swore to myself I was never going to be the kind of man who hurt a women."

"Did anyone…" she prompts, a little alarmed by what his statement hints at.

He shakes his head, "No, no one ever hurt me. But I had quite a few foster siblings that were beat up by their parents, and quite a few more who saw a parent getting beat up by someone. They seemed more bothered by the second one, strangely. I guess we can at least be grateful that Cassie wasn't around to witness that."

"This was a long way from beating me up, and you aren't that sort of man. You weren't yourself when you did this to me."

"Yeah, well a lot of the people I'm talking about weren't themselves when it happened, either. A lot of them were drunk or high on drugs, but it certainly didn't make what they did ok."

"Of course not, but they choose to take those things. You didn't choose this," Janet says softly.

He takes the splint, and brings it to his mouth gracing it with a gentle kiss on the way.

-0-0-0-

Janet's stomach drops as she hears Cassie talking to her grandmother on the phone. "Janet is having so much trouble driving with her wrist."

Janet flinches, she hadn't thought of how she was going to explain this to the outside world. She'd been honest with her daughter. She probably wouldn't have if she'd seen Daniel's reaction to his actions before she'd done it. But she'd been frustrated and a bit scared when she'd come home the night after it had happened. So when Cassie asked about the wrist, Janet had explained that Daniel had done it to her by accident, because something alien had messed with his head. Now, she's not really sure what her daughter is going to let slip.

"Daniel sprained her wrist," the girl explains simply.

Janet flinches. A second later, her daughter extends the phone to her saying, "Grandma wants to talk to you."

"Hi, mom," Janet says, walking out of earshot of her daughter.

"Janet, what happened?" her mom asks breathlessly.

"It was an accident, a work-related accident. It's really no big deal. I just have to wear the splint for a couple of days, and I honestly am not having as much trouble driving as Cassie makes it sound like."

"But Daniel did it?"

"It was an accident at work, mom."

"Sweetie, he _hurt_ you. I know you feel sorry for him. I know that he had a pretty rough time growing up. But what if it's Cassie next time?"

"He would never hurt Cassie," Janet protests softly, her heart clenching in the fear.

"He hurt you, Janet, and you can't let him get away with it. I know it's hard, but it's not going to get easier. You have to get out while you still can."

"Mom, Daniel feels terrible about what happened."

"Of course he does, they always feel bad after it's said and done."

"Mom, it really wasn't his fault, and I am sure it's not going to happen again."

"I'm just trying to protect you, sweetie."

"I know, I'd get the same way if I ever thought that someone laid a hand on Cassie."

"And you know that I really do like Daniel, right?"

"Well, that's good, because I plan on bringing him home for Christmas this year."

"Two Christmases in a row? That has to be some kind of a record for you. I'm pretty sure that your husband didn't even make two Christmases."


	33. Part 3 Chapter 7

**Two Months Later**

"So you missed last week," Shelby says lightheartedly before church begins. She's not really surprised. Teal'c is sometimes on a mission on church days. She doesn't know what that means, and she doesn't ask. Now that he's without a chaperone, she has figured out she can get a lot more information by pretending that she already knows it.

"I was with my son," Teal'c responds.

"Your son?" Shelby asks in utter shock.

"Indeed," Teal'c replies.

"You never mentioned that you had a kid before!" she practically squeaks.

"You never before inquired."

"It's not usually the sort of thing that you have to inquire about. I mean, most parents just talk about their kids. Jack mentioned his kids the very first day that I met him."

"O'Neill and his children share a residence."

"Oh, I got you. So did he get taken away, or are you and his mother just separated?"

"I would not allow my son to be taken from me by force."

"Well, when social services come, you ain't got nothin' to say about it. I should know, I got taken from my mom a coupla times when I was growing up. I never lasted long though. She was good with social workers."

"There is an organization in your country which steals children? Why does your government not work to stop them?"

"Dude, they _are_ the government," Shelby says, giving him a weird look.

Teal'c files this information away in his brain for later reference. He's pledged allegiance to this government, and might have to take his vow back now that he knows they steal children from their parents.

"You didn't answer his question, did you and your son's mom split up?"

"I have been away from her for many months."

"But are you, like, divorced?" Shelby asks.

Teal'c pauses, "I left that country, and have pledged allegiance to yours."

"I get that you're a political refugee or whatever, but dude, they didn't even let you take your wife and kid with? That's cold man, stone cold."

"They were unaware of my family the point at which I pled my allegiance to them."

"You didn't even tell them man?" Shelby's eyes well up against her will, "You just left him there? Did you even say goodbye?"

Teal'c shakes his head no.

"My dad didn't say goodbye either."

Teal'c is silent for a minute trying to figure a way to make this girl of Earth understand his decision. Trying, for the first time, to really understand the decision himself. "I was defying my god. No one has ever done that before. I was sure that this action was going to result in my demise. I had seen gods kill for far less than that. I considered retrieving my family from my place of residence, and fleeing with them. Had they been caught, they too would have been executed. I believed that my leaving without them would have kept them safe. I was incorrect. My actions nearly cost my son his life."

She is silent for long second. "This is the first time you saw him since you left?"

"Indeed."

"How long have you been gone?"

"One and a half of your years."

"Our years?" she asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Time is calculated differently where I am from," he responds.

"Ah, so did you bring your wife and son home?"

He tilts his head and looks at her for a while, "They remained at home."

And that is the first time Shelby realizes that Teal'c doesn't actually view his newly adopted country as his home. "Why didn't you bring them here with you?"

"I wish for my son to be free. This is not yet possible. I fight every day that he might one day have his freedom. He is a slave there, and here he would not be a slave, but he would be far from free. He would live his life in the confines of a concrete building without any windows. He could not play outside with his friends. He could not go to school. He could not learn to fight as a warrior."

"But you miss him?"

"Indeed."

"Teal'c you are perhaps the least selfish man I've ever met."

And he looks at her with surprise, and for the first time she recognizes the faint thing that flashes across his face as an emotion. She was sure the man didn't even feel them, or much less express them before just now.

**Two Weeks Later**

Sam is in the bathroom when Hannah starts crying. She rushes to finish up, and runs into the baby's room. She stops short when she enters the door. Her son is sitting in the rocking chair, singing a lullaby to his baby sister.

She feels like she should scold him. After all, Ty knows that he's not supposed to pick up his little sister without someone right there to help him. But the picture is so beautiful that she hasn't the heart. Besides, the baby is just fine.

Just then Ty leans over and bestows a kiss on his little sister's brow, and the baby stops crying in an instant.

"Ty, where you aware that you are a really good big brother?" she asks.

"Of course," he responds without looking up.

**One Month Later**

Daniel fidgets with his glasses as he rings the doorbell to the Fraiser house. He usually doesn't ring the doorbell anymore, but on this occasion, he feels like he should ask permission to enter. After all, he's asking permission for a lot of other things.

"Hi, Daniel," Cassie says cheerfully, opening the door.

"Hey, Cass, do you want to go on a short walk with me?"

"Not really, it's kind of cold out," she responds easily.

Daniel stands in the doorway, stunned and pale, not quite knowing what to do next. His entire plan hinged on the little girl saying yes.

She stares at him, standing in the doorway as if he's just experienced some sort of trauma, and carefully amends her previous statement, "Sure, just let me grab the super-warm coat. And I hope this is actually going to be a short walk."

She can tell that Daniel has something important to say, and her love for him is the only reason that she is agreeing to this. Everything that is within her wants to say 'no way'.

They walk together three blocks in silence before Cassie finally says, "So was this walk really about your desperate need to get hypothermia, or…"

There is another pause of almost a minute, and Cassie has almost given up on the man ever spilling the beans when she says, "You know Jack got Ty an engagement ring shortly after he asked Sam to marry him. I thought it was kind of a cute idea."

Cassie's heart leaps within her, and she doesn't even mind that he takes another long pause before continuing.

"I think a ring might be a little… odd. But I liked the concept, you know. Because if you're going to marry someone with a kid, the commitment you're making to the kid is as big as the one you're making to the mother… maybe even bigger."

She looks up at him with tears almost brimming in her eyes.

He stops, and kneels down on one knee in the snow, snapping open a box containing a beautiful silver locket and says, "Cassandra Fraiser, do I have your permission to propose to your mother?"

"Of course you do!" she exclaims, flinging herself into his arms.

He grins at her, "So, ah, do you like the necklace? 'Cause if you don't, I could get you something else. I mean, if you wanted a ring or a bracelet or, heck, a toy, I could do that instead."

"I love it."

"Or I could get a different style. I thought about getting you gold, but it just didn't seem like it was your style. But if you'd rather have a gold one, I'll get it for you…"

"On Hanka, gold was worn only by the priests and priestess of the goddess," she says softly.

"So I made the right call with silver then," he says softly, rustling her hair.

"You definitely did. Now, come on, you've got a question to ask my mother," she stays, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him back toward her house.

"Wow, Cassie, you're not going to say anything when we get back to the house, are you? I mean, I want to ask your mother in my own way."

Cassie nods her head, and then suddenly grows grim.

"What is it?" he asks, noticing the change.

"What if she says no?" Cassie asks.

Daniel's heart sinks to his stomach so fast that for a second or so he can't even find the words to speak. Then he chokes out in panic, "Do you think she is going to say no?"

"No, of course not, she loves you," she says, comforting the panicked man before her. She kicks a rock with her foot, considering what to say next, before she continues, "It's just… I thought you already were my dad. And here you are saying that you're going to make a promise to be my dad _if_ mom marries you."

"Oh, my dearest Cassie-girl," he says with a contented sigh, "You are mine forever. But if I marry your Mom, it's going to be different. I won't just be there for the father-daughter dances, and come over a couple times a week, and help you with your history homework. I'm going to be there every single day – when I'm on Earth, of course. I'm going to make you breakfast, and check your math homework, and tuck you in every single night, and I'm going to be there if you have a nightmare, and for parent teacher night, and… it's going to be different, sprout. Just different."

"I think I'm going to like different."

"Me too, love. Me too."

-0-0-0-

"You ready?" Janet asks, when Daniel and Cassie return from their short walk.

Daniel nods his head, but Cassie shakes her head, "We're ready, Mom, but you're not."

Daniel shoots Cassie a glare, but Janet just looks confused. "What's wrong honey?" she asks.

"I just think maybe you should dress up a little more," Cassie says.

"Where are we going?" Janet asks Daniel, thinking that he might have told her daughter something that he didn't let her in on. She's in her second-nicest dress. Granted, she could have put a touch more effort into the make-up, but seriously, Daniel sees her almost every day. He's seen her without clothes or make-up more than once. They had, of late, got in the habit of sneaking a communal shower after Cassie went to bed and before Daniel slipped out the door.

"You look amazing," Daniel says, kissing her and leaving an arm wrapped around the small of her back.

"You should at least put on earrings," Cassie whines.

"I'll be right back," Janet says, slipping from his grasp and running up the stairs in heals. They've finally reached the point where Daniel doesn't mention it anymore. He's used to it, and no longer fears that it's going to result in her falling.

"We're going to be late!" Daniel calls after her.

"Well maybe you and Cassie shouldn't have taken such a long walk," Janet calls back.

"I never should have asked you for her hand," Daniel grumbles to Cassie.

"You're right, I believe the Earth tradition is to ask her father," Cassie teases back.

Daniel stops cold in his tracks, "Do you think I should do that? I mean, is the family going to be mad at me if I don't ask them before I ask her?"

Cassie shakes her head, "They love you Daniel, it's going to be ok."

Janet comes running down the stairs, putting earrings in place as she goes. She bends down, and hands Cassie a necklace which matches the bracelet she must have thrown on upstairs.

"Better?" she asks her daughter, as she tilts her head to fasten on the other earring.

"You look perfect, mom," her daughter assures her.

-0-0-0-

"Janet, I'm really glad we started dating," Daniel tells her, taking his first sip of wine at the restaurant.

"Me too," she says with a smile.

"You are truly the most amazing person I've ever met. You're so strong, and compassionate, and smart," he continues, reaching across the table to take her hand lightly in his.

"Ok," she says slowly, "What exactly is going on here?"

"I'm telling you how great you are," he says with a laugh, "Apparently I don't do that enough."

"I just feel like I'm missing something, is it our anniversary or something?"

"Of course, it's not our anniversary, you'd have to be married to have an anniversary," he says with an edge in his voice. He's starting to get a bit annoyed at the way she keeps interrupting his plan. He'd put a lot of thought into his plan.

"I meant the anniversary of our first date or first kiss or something…oh," her eyes brighten suddenly as she realizes what is really going on.

"What?" he asks.

"Nothing," she says grinning, "I'm shutting up now. You talk. You were doing such a good job of it," she lets out a little giggle.

He shoots her a suspicious look, but continues on with h is planned speech, "I am so lucky to have you and Cassie in my life. My only regret is that I don't have the two of you in my life a whole lot more. I was wondering, would you marry me."

"Yes," she says, jumping up from the table. She runs around to his side, and sits down in his lap to give him a long and slightly scandalous kiss.

When she finally pulls away she looks up, she sees that she has the attention of most of the people in the room. She blushes but then offers, "What can a girl do, he just offered to marry me?" And then the room breaks out in applause. Janet stands up and walks back to her seat across the table from Daniel.

Daniel's cheeks go red from the attention as well as the kiss. "You said yes so quick that you didn't bother to take a look at the ring," he warns.

"If you think you have to bribe me to marry you, you're nuts," she says.

He hand the velvet box over to her, and she gasps as she opens it. "Daniel," she scolds softly.

"Don't you like it?"

"It's too big," she tells him, closing the box and pushing it back.

"I want you to have it," he insists pushing the box back over to her.

"I've seen your car, darling, you can't afford this."

"The car again! If it really bothers you that much I'll sell it, maybe buy a minivan."

"Minivan? Are we going to need it?" Janet asks with an even bigger grin.

"Well, I thought maybe, if you wanted to," he says insecurely, "We could fill it up with some kids."

"I'd like that," she says.

"Of course, you know that medically that might take some time to do."

"I think I can be patient," she says, "Maybe we can even get a head start tonight."

"We're not married yet," he reminds her.

"True," she says coyly, "But are you figuring on a long engagement? Because if not…"

He smiles, "No long engagement, but let's not get pregnant until we're officially married."

She smiles at him again, and lets out a little giggle.

"But seriously Daniel, you don't need to get me this big honking rock. You don't need to impress me. You already impress me with how brilliant, and handsome, kind, and courageous you are."

"Thank you for your concern, madam, but I can actually afford that ring. You've seen my apartment, right?"

She nods her head, but that isn't quite accurate. She's been in his apartment plenty of times, but she was never really noticing the décor. It was always for a lunchtime rendezvous, and her view had mostly either been of a ceiling or some sheets.

"I've got lots of artifacts there. Just because I choose to use my money to buy ancient board games instead of new cars doesn't mean I'm destitute."

She smiles, and slips the ring out of the box and onto her finger. "Thank you, then," she says softly, admiring the way it looks on her hand in a way that erases any doubt in his mind that the big rock was the way to go.

"I'm assuming you already told Cassie, by her desperate need to dress me up?"

"I did, and I gave her a locket too," he confesses.

"I am so looking forward to having you around every day," she grins.

"Oh, me too," he says with something akin to relief on his face, "And I'm also looking forward to getting to hold you all night long."

"The honeymoon," she says with a grin.

"Promising you, forever," he returns.

Her eyes well up, and she pulls a cloth napkin from the table to dab at her eyes to keep the make-up, already worn from a long day at work, from being completely ruined. Cassie would never forgive her if she came back from her engagement with trails of mascara running down her cheeks.

"Forever," she says with a nod. "I like the sound of that."


	34. Part 3 Chapter 8

**Spoilers for "Bane"**

Daniel gives Janet a delicate kiss at the door, and takes a step to leave.

"And just where do you think you're going, mister?" Janet asks, lightly grabbing onto his tie.

Daniel glances at his watch, confused. "It's after Cassie's bedtime; she'll already be asleep."

Janet actually laughs in his face.

"What?" he asks, catching a bit of the laugh from her.

"You don't honestly believe that that little girl is going to be asleep, do you?" she asks incredulously.

"Why wouldn't she be?" he asks innocently.

"You do get that from her perspective, her parents have just agreed to get married, right?"

"You're saying she's going to be too excited," he says.

"Yeah, and besides, I want to call my parents and deliver the news, and trust me, they're going to want to talk to you as soon as they hear."

"But it's after news time, aren't you going to wake them up?"

"Yep, but they'd be pretty annoyed if I didn't."

He blinks, "I guess I need a little tutoring in families," he says sadly.

She makes a face so full of empathy that it shows almost more emotion than his own, and then softly says, "You know, they're your family now, too. You're not an orphan anymore."

Cassie slides her lock into the keyhole, but before she puts her hand on the door to turn it pops open.

"Finally, you're done kissing!" Cassie exclaims, bouncing from foot to foot.

"We were talking," Daniel protests.

"Yeah, right, I watch TV, Daniel, and the guy always kisses the girl in front of her house. But usually not as long as you guys. Don't you run out of air at some point? I mean, I heard you squeak the step minutes ago."

"There was some kissing, but mostly it was talking," Janet says, "And I think I need to keep a better eye on exactly _what_ you are watching on TV."

"I'd say, I thought she was still into Disney. Disney doesn't have porch-kissing does it?" Daniel says with worry in his voice.

"It's kissing guys, now quite trying to distract me, and tell me the news!" she says, bouncing in place.

"Who said we have any news?" Janet teases.

But then Cassie looks at Daniel with such a look of devastation that she immediately regrets it. "Oh, honey, Daniel and are getting married."

Cassie lets out a high pitched squeal, and Daniel quickly shuts the door behind himself in the hopes that that way the noise will only wake the neighbors in a ten-block radius, as opposed to the entire world. She flings herself upon both of them in a hug that seems to last forever.

"We're a real family now," she says softly.

"We've always been real," Janet corrects softly.

"But we're realer now," Cassie says with a contented sigh.

Daniel hugs her for a bit longer before he says, "It is long past your bedtime, darling."

"When are you guys getting married?" Cassie asks.

"Soon," Daniel says with confidence.

"On Hanka, the morning after your engagement, you moved all you stuff in to your husband's house, and then you were married. You're going to move in here, right, Daniel?"

"Yeah?" he says, looking at Janet. At her nod he says with more confidence, "Yeah, but I'm not going to be moving in tomorrow. It's going to be a couple of months."

"But then you're going to be here every day?" Cassie asks.

"When I'm on Earth, yeah," Daniel says.

She leaps up and gives him a kiss on his cheek before skipping up the stairs. As soon as she is out of sight, Janet dashes for the phone. She dials the number with rapid speed.

"No, mom, everything is fine. He proposed," and then Janet proceeds to make a sound very much like the sound that Cassie made not long ago. Daniel can't help but laugh.

"Of course he's still here, you want to talk to him?" she says, running across the room to grab Daniel.

"Ah… hello," he says nervously into the phone.

There is blubbering on the other end of the phone. What did he do wrong? Doesn't she want him to marry her daughter?

"Welcome to the family, son," she finally gets out.

Now he feels tears coming to his own eyes, "Thank you," he whispers, because he doesn't have any voice left for a louder speech.

"Janet deserves happiness, and so do you. Son, you'd better take care of her and Cassie."

"I intend to, ma'am," he says.

"You mean, Mom, right?" she says.

And then his tears spill over in earnest.

**A Week Later**

All Teal'c can think about is finding a place to lay down. He's sick. He remembers sick from a century ago, before his prim'ta.

He hadn't liked it.

He knows that he shouldn't have run away from the SGC. He shouldn't have pulled out his symbiote. He is terrified of what the bug is doing to him.

He walks down a street, and catches sight of Shelby. He calls her name, and the girl looks at him as if she was just caught doing something horrible.

Then she sees his face for the first time, and realizes that something is wrong.

"Are you sick?"

He looks at her, and to the alley behind her. There are some ancient stained cushions lined up together. There is a broken crate set up like a nightstand. On the nightstand, there are some college textbooks and broken pencils.

"Are you living rough, Shelby?" he asks.

"Living rough?" Shelby asks confused.

"I am endeavoring to incorporate Earth slang into my language," he explains.

"Well, I don't know exactly what part of Earth this language is from, but I have no idea what you are talking about."

"I gleaned this slang from a show about a doctor who possess no name," Teal'c offers.

"Ah, you got it from _Doctor Who_ then. That's British slang. Whatsit mean?"

"I am asking you whether your place of residence has walls and a ceiling," he says, looking meaningfully at the cushions behind him.

Shelby's face falls. "It's just temporary."

"Were you telling me untruths when you described the dormitories in which students at your college stayed?"

"No, they exist."

"But these were not a place in which you resided."

"I lived there," she says, kicking an imaginary rock on the floor.

"But now your place of residence is a cushion on the street," he says.

"This ain't no big deal, ok?"

"I wish to stay with you for a time," he says, looking at her eyes.

"Don't you stay in your little prison?"

"I have escaped," Teal'c replies.

"That's great, but I think you picked the wrong time to do it, you look horrible," Shelby says.

He raises an eyebrow.

"I mean that you looks sick. You should go to a doctor or something."

"The doctors view me as a medical experiment," he says softly.

"It does feel like hat, but they are really trying to help you."

"I do not believe that that is the true in my case," he says firmly.

"Ok, well, pull up a couple of soggy cushions, and have a share of my dumpster trash. I have class in a few hours."

"You are still attending the university?"

"Yeah, and working two jobs, 'though you wouldn't know it from where I am living."

"Does not your employment pay you enough to secure a residence for yourself?" he asks lowering himself down on the cushion.

She sighs, "Yeah, I mean, at least it should. But it was the third job that got me a pad to crash at. I worked as an RA. That just means I looked after all the other girls in my dorm. The first two jobs were paying for my college and books, and maybe if, it was a good day, my food, too. But it turns out that working three jobs and going to school full time is a lot of work, so I fell asleep on my job. A bunch of girls snuck in alcohol, and I go sacked from it."

"I am not familiar with a form of Earth punishment that involves putting people into a sack."

She blinks at him for a second trying to figure out if he's being serious or not. She sides with serious, and says, "No see, it's not a literal sack. It's means you got fired. The RA job meant I could live for free in the dorm. When I lost it, I got kicked out, not that I could have afforded the place, anyway."

He nods his head, feeling nothing to add.

"Why do you always say 'Earth' ain't you from Earth?"

"I have been instructed to replace the word 'Earth' with the word 'American'."

Her eyebrows wrinkle together, but she doesn't say anything. She can feel that direct questioning is going to him clam up.

-0-0-0-

"I require substance," Teal'c rasps out.

"I know, I bought us a coupla sandwiches at the mini-mart."

"I did not think that you had the resources required to make such purchases," he says.

"Well, I don't, really. But you need something ta eat."

"I am not certain that I am going to survive this," he replies.

She blinks at him in surprise, "You're serious? Of course you are going to survive!"

He doesn't make a face, which is of course no surprise, but it's the particular way in which he doesn't make a face which worries her.

"You're serous? You think you're going to die. You've got to go to the hospital, man."

"I do not think they can do anything but prolong my suffering. After my death, assure them that I wish you to have all of the Earth currency I have acquired."

"Dude, we have to get you to a hospital so you don't die," she says, a bit more frantically than she intended to.

"You must tell no-one," he says, grabbing onto her arm. He grabs a little too tight. Just a little, not the sort of thing which is going to leave a bruise or a scar. But it's enough like the treatment that she's used to getting from men to give her pause. Does she really want to get involved with someone like this? He's huge, and strong, and fights people for a living.

And if he wanted to hurt her, like her father, her brother, her step-father, she would never be able to fight back against Teal'c.

"Ok, man, you're secret is safe with me. Calm down."

Teal'c relaxes against the cushion.

-0-0-0-

She promised she wasn't going to tell anyone. But he's not conscious, and she's afraid he was telling the truth about being close to death. She has the number of the base. Teal'c had given it to her months ago at church, with the words, "It is a tradition in your culture, I believe, to cement relationships with the exchanging of numbers which can be dialed into a telephone to reach the other person." She'd never taken him up on the offer, because she wasn't exactly sure he'd known what he was offering. She was never quite sure if he thought of the two of them as friends or as something more.

Of course, none of that mattered now. Now she just had to make the call, and save his life.

"Ah, yeah, a while ago this guy Teal'c gave me this number," she says into the phone, while fidgeting.

"I'm sorry, ma'am Teal'c is not available now."

"I know.I'm with him, and he's really sick," she says.

"Can you tell us where you are?" a somewhat frantic voice asks.

"Yeah."

**Four Days Later**

Jack walks up to the same alley that he'd pulled his friend out of a couple of days before. "Shelby?" he says softly.

She looks at his face, and it's very grave.

"If you came here to give me his estate, you'd better just get the fuck out."

"Teal'c isn't dead, Shelby," he says.

"Is he going to be ok?" she asks.

Jack nods, with a smile crossing his face for the first time, "It really looks like it."

"You don't have to lie to me. I saw what he looked like, dude. He was sick."

"He was Shelby, and if you hadn't called me even after he asked you not to, he probably wouldn't have made it. As it is, though, he's going to be just fine."

Shelby tries not to cry. Strong people don't cry, especially not when good thing happen. But a few tears get squeezed out anyway.

"I did bring you money, though," he says, examining her face, "Teal'c told me you've been living on the street."

"It's just temporary," she whispers.

"Oh, Shelby," Jack says with a voice so full of emotion she can't help but look up into his face.

"I don't want your pity. I'm fine. In another year, I'm going to have my degree, and I'll get a job. And I will never again have to live on the street, or go hungry all summer until I go back to school and the free lunch. I'll never have to watch my siblings go hungry either, 'cause I'm going to let them live with me the second that my place gets to be better than their place is."

"None of those things should have happened to you in the first place. Teal'c and I, we want to make sure that none of those things ever happen to you again," he says, pushing an envelope toward her hand.

She shakes her head, and puts out her hand to push the envelope away from her. "No thank you, man," she says.

"Shelby, you would do the same for us if the situation was reversed. It's just a little bit of money to get you going."

"I don't take no handouts," she says fiercely.

Jack sighs, "Teal'c said that you'd say that. Something about you being a 'warrior of great renown'. So we came with a backup plan – a job offer. Now before you say no to this, I want you to be aware that this is something we talked about offering you a long time before we even knew what was going on in your personal life. And the offer itself would be amazing even if the money isn't involved."

She looks at him skeptically, but doesn't interrupt, so he continues, "There is an infirmary at the place I work. And there is a doctor there, a really amazing doctor."

"Janet," Shelby offers.

"That's right, "Jack says, looking somewhat surprised.

"Teal'c's mentioned her before," Shelby explains.

"Ok, so she wants an assistant. Someone with a medical background."

"I have school for another three semesters. I have class during the day, and there is no way in hell that I'm going to drop out of school. I don't have a future if I drop out of school."

"I totally agree with you, and we would never ask you to do that. It would be kind of funky hours, just when she works nights. So sometimes it would be a 12 hour shift over the night for a couple of days, and some days you wouldn't work at all. It's going to mess with your sleeping patterns."

"I've had worse jobs."

"Right, well, there is a really big catch to this, and then there are some really big benefits to this. The catch is that you're going to have to enlist in order to make it work. The benefits are, it will pay for the rest of your schooling. As far as you want to go in the medical field."

"So I just get my school paid for? No money."

"No, you'll get money too; $25 an hour."

"But I'm only working like two hours a week or something?"

"No, it will be closer to thirty, I think. I'm not really up on the details."

"That is too sweet of a deal, you guys just made that up so you can give me a hand-out without me thinking that it is a hand out. Either that, or it's got to have some kind of a catch."

"I'm not trying to trick you here, Shelby, this is a good deal. But there are some serious catches; you have to enroll in the military. Do some basic training, promise them years of your life. And you have to agree to work at the Cheyenne Mountain infirmary for at least three years. The reason they have this deal is that it's been a little hard to keep nurses there."

"Why?" she asks suspiciously.

"It's a bit more of a dangerous job than most other stateside ones. And that's the other thing; I can't tell you exactly what we do at Cheyanne Mountain before you take the position and sign up for three years. I can only tell you that you would never guess in a million years, and that it is awesome beyond all measure."

She smiles, "I'd get to know what Teal'c does then?"

Jack nods.

"And I'd get to figure out his secret?"

"His secret?" Jack asks nervously, wondering just what exactly Teal'c told her.

"Oh, he didn't say anything," she says quickly, understanding why Jack looks so nervous. "But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that there is something about him that being from another country doesn't quite explain."

"Yes, you'd get to know Teal'c's secrets, even read his very interesting medical file, if you wanted."

"It sounds like a deal. And are you sure there is more than one secret?" Shelby says.

"I don't suppose I could talk you into crashing on my couch until the money kicks in, could I?" he says, looking at the cushions behind him with sadness in his eyes.

She shakes her head.

"Ok, well, at least let me give you this," he says, taking a bill out of envelope and handing it to her.

"I told you I don't want handouts."

"Teal'c is just repaying you for the sandwich you gave him when he was sick."

"That sandwich didn't cost no $20 bucks."

"Interest, compounded hourly," he responds, pressing it into the palm of her hand.

Her hand closes around it reluctantly. It meant some cereal, a loaf of bread, a couple of cans of fruits and vegetables. The sort of things you could have without a fridge or a stove.


	35. Part 3 Chapter 9

**A Week Later**

"Can we go through the names of my cousins one more time?" Cassie asks her mother nervously.

"Honey, there isn't going to be a test," Janet teases her daughter.

"Have you explained airport security to her?" Daniel asks Janet, thinking that is probably going to be a much bigger deal when the girl actually encounters it.

"I don't know how you're supposed to act around cousins. I've never had cousins or aunts or uncles before," Cassie says.

"Sweetie, you've sent them e-mails, you've talked to them on the phone before," Janet says.

"It's not the same," Cassie says.

Daniel bends down to look into the eyes of her, "Let me tell you a secret, I'm not really used to a family either."

"But they aren't your family," Cassie says.

Janet is about to scold her for her rudeness, but Daniel isn't offended, and he says, "Last year, they decided that I was family."

"Well, if they adopted you ,they're surely going to adopt me," Cassie says with newfound confidence.

"You were worried that your own family wasn't going to love you?" Janet asks. "You're amazing, and they are going to love you with all of their hearts. You have absolutely no reason to be nervous."

"But I'm still nervous," Cassie informs her.

"They really are great people, Cass," Daniel assures her.

"Oh, I'm not nervous about them anymore. Now, I'm just nervous about flying in a plane," Cassie says with a laugh, "I think I'd feel better if I knew exactly _how _they flew."

Daniel looks at Janet who looks as stunned as he does. "I think a call to Auntie Sam is in order."

-0-0-0-

"No! I don't want Emma to leave! Come on, Emma, we'll hide where they can never find us!" Ty exclaims as the doorbell rings. He grabs the girl's hand, and they run up the stairs together.

Jack giggles as he opens the door. He has no doubt in his ability to find the children when he needs to.

"Hey, Jack, how is that baby of yours?" Henry asks.

"Fine. How is Stargate Command since I left it yesterday?"

"Dandy. Where are the kids?" he asks, looking around.

"They've decided to hide from us; they don't want to be separated," Jack explains.

"Shouldn't we go look for them?" he asks.

"It might be funnier if we wait down here until they're tired of hiding, and then have them come down to look for us."

Henry laughs, "Jack O'Neill, you are something else."

"You want a beer?" Jack asks walking into the kitchen.

Henry nods his head, and Jack grabs two of them out of the fridge, and hands one to his friend.

"What are you plans for Christmas?" Jack asks.

Henry shrugs.

"Hammond doesn't have you on a mission, does he?" Jack asks.

"No, there are no missions scheduled over Christmas."

"So are you leaving, going to visit family or anything?" Jack asks.

"There really isn't any family to visit."

"I'm sorry," Jack says. "Hey, why don't you come to Christmas at our house?"

"I couldn't impose like that."

"It's not going to be anything big. Just a normal dinner at our house, plus my mom. Seriously, you're welcome to come. We could use a little more family, as well."

"If you really just wanted more people, you would have a lot of people to invite. Your team, for instance."

"Daniel is spending Christmas with Janet's family. Feretti is going to see his folks. Even Teal'c is having dinner with a girl he met at church," he ignores the eye raise the last comment gives him, "And even if all of this wasn't true, I'd want to spend Christmas with you and your daughter."

"Says the man who's gone through the Stargate more than any other person of Earth," Henry says.

"So that's a yes on the Christmas?" Jack asks.

"Emma could use a little more family," he agrees.

"Daddy, come find us!" Emma calls.

**The Next Day**

"Cassie, why don't you sit by the window, it has the best view," Daniel asks Cassie, as he and Janet board the plane with the girl between them.

"Doesn't it also have the scariest view?" she asks nervously.

"It's not nearly as scary as the way that we got from Toronto to Colorado," Daniel says cryptically, earning a laugh from the little girl, "But you can sit wherever you want."

"I think that I want to sit by the window," she says boldy.

A women smiles at them, and lightly touches the girl's arm as they pass, "Honey, you look just like your dad."

Cassie blinks at the older women for a long second, trying to figure out exactly how to respond to the comment. She eventually settles on, "Thanks, 'cause he's super-handsome."

Daniel's cheeks go red at the proclamation, and Janet snickers behind him.*

-0-0-0-

"Oh, I'm so glad to see you!" Cassie's new grandmother exclaims, giving her the kind of hug which literally takes away the breath, before passing her over to her great-grandmother. The older women has a lot less strength, but she still has enough strength to make it very difficult to breath for a couple of seconds.

"The kids are all making snowmen in the backyard. You probably don't have snow pants, with how infrequently it snows down in Colorado, but never fear, the family brought everyone's old snow clothes, and there is probably something you can fit into," the older mother says, letting go of the child, only to guide her by her shoulders out of the room.

"I'd rather stay here with you," Cassie says nervously.

"Nonsense!" the older women exclaims. "You want to go out and play with the children."

"Janet," Cassie says with terror in her eyes.

But it's not her mother that comes to her rescue. Daniel asks, "You want me to come out with you for a little bit?"

Her whole face lights up, and he takes her hand as they move to the back of the house to find snow-suits.

-0-0-0-

Hannah is laying on her stomach on a blanket in the living room. Tyler is laying in front of her face, making funny faces at her, and she's moving her arms around. It looks like she's trying to swat her big brother in the face.

The doorbell rings, and Tyler runs to it and begins jumping up, trying to peer through the peephole that is far above his head.

"Let me get it," his grandfather says, coming up behind.

"It's Emma, I just know it!" Tyler says.

Ty is, of course, correct his prediction. As soon as the door opens to allow Emma and her father into the house, Emma exclaims, "I brought my dress-up clothes. Let's go play princess!" Emma says, waving a suitcase in her hands.

"Yes!" Ty says, pumping the air before following behind her.

"I'm terribly sorry about the fact that your grandson is probably going to spend Christmas in a dress. I tried to talk her out of this idea, but my efforts were rewarded by not only tears, but a very condemning and logical talk from my little girl about what a bigot I was not to letting a little boy dress however he wanted to dress."

"She didn't use the word bigot, did she?"

"Nope, but the words she used did have quite a bite to them, though. I believe the term 'poopy head' was brandied about," Henry admits.

"We're not much bothered by Ty's choice of clothing anymore," Jacob admits with a smile.

"That's good; I'm not quite as accepting about it as I'd like to be," Henry admits.

Jacob smiles, "Parenting, or grandparenting, for that matter, is a strange thing, isn't it? You put all of this effort into trying to make your kids into the person you want them to be. You try to teach them right from wrong. You read to them and talk to them so they'll do better in school. You make them do chores so they'll be independent one day. You try to guide them into having the right friends. You enroll them in all sorts of after school activities, and fret about what kind of music and movies and books they're exposed to."

Henry nods.

"And sometimes you get so caught up in that that you forget, you have almost no say in the sort of person they become someday."

Henry looks at the man in surprise. Just then, Sam comes running through the room, "I think I'm burning the turkey! Dad, why didn't you remind me to set a timer on the turkey?!"

"Probably because you never asked me to, dear," he says calmly.

When she's out of sight, he looks back at Boyd and says, "And it's only when they're grown up that you realize that it's good you don't have complete control over the person that they become. Because let me tell you, in my wildest dreams I could not have imagined a person as amazing as my daughter. Ty isn't the grandson that I would have asked for, but I am so unbelievably glad that he is the grandson that I got."

-0-0-0-

Janet glances out the window at the snowball fight that is going on in the backyard. The combatants range from four to sixteen, with the exception of Daniel, the only adult.

He throws a snowball, hitting Cassie directly in the chest. The snow covers her in a chilly powder, and she scoops a handful of snow off the ground to retaliate. He grabs one of her toddler-aged cousins, and holds the child up as a human shield.

The children seem to be forming some sort of Geneva convention about how ethical this behavior is when he puts a snow ball in the hand of the youngster, and charges a few of the older boys who are hiding behind a fort.

The boys are so surprised by the unexpected onslaught that the toddler manages to drop the snowball in her hand on one of their heads. It falls off the head without even having cracked, and all the children begin laughing.

"He's great with kids," Janet's grandmother says, coming up behind her unannounced.

Janet turns toward the older women, and accepts the cup of hot chocolate that she is offered, "That he is," she admits.

"And you're engaged now, last year you wouldn't even admit that you were dating," the women continues.

"We weren't dating last Christmas, it wasn't that we weren't willing to admit it, Gran."

"He's a good one, Janet. I never liked that first husband of yours."

"I know, Gran, you told him so the first time that you met him."

"That's the sort of thing that happens when you don't get married in a church. You and Daniel are going to get married properly, aren't you?"

"Gran, we haven't made any plans yet," she says staring out the window. "But maybe we should do it in the church, we could use all the luck that we could get."

"Ah, you don't need luck when someone loves you like he does. You can see it in his eyes."

Just then Daniel catches sight of her in the window. His eyes light up, and a huge grin covers his face. He waves to her, and is so distracted that a snow ball hits him square in the face. Some of the snow gets into his mouth, because of his wide grin, and he turns to chase down the culprit.

"Your eyes are a bit harder to read, Janet. Do you love him?"

Janet takes a sip of the steamy liquid as she allows herself to imagine, for the first time, what it would be like if she and Daniel really worked out. If they stayed together long enough to have lots of children, and grandchildren.

She turns to her grandmother, "Don't my eyes give an answer?"

"They do now, darlin'," the older women says giving her a kiss on the cheek before walking away.

***This is based on the fact that people always used to tell my mom she looked just like my grandma, who was her mother-in-law. She did look a lot more like that Grandma than her own mother! And that was her comeback, "Thanks, 'cause she's beautiful." If you correct people****,**** they just feel super awkward, like it's an insult to say you look like someone you're not related ****to****.**


	36. Part 3 Chapter 11

**Spoilers for "A Matter of Time."**

**A Week Later**

"Teal'c, I'm so glad to see you!" Shelby says, running over to give him a hug as soon as he comes to church. "Are you ok?"

"I am well," Teal'c says.

"You weren't so well the last time I saw you," she says.

"I am sorry if my previous illness frightened you," he says.

She smiles at him, "You'd better be."

"Dr. Fraizer has informed me that you have accepted her offer for employment," Teal'c replies.

She nods her head, "I'm doing basic training over the summer, so I won't be able to start for a coupla months."

"What are you doing for food and shelter until that time?" he asks gravely.

"I'm fine," Shelby says stubbornly.

"I have petitioned for the right to live off-base," Teal'c says.

"You're getting sprung from prison? That's wonderful."

"It has not been approved yet," he says. Shelby nods, and they walk over to what has become 'their' pew together. "I wish to share my place of residence with you, should I be granted permission," he says.

Shelby stares at him with eyes which clearly show disappointment, "I've yet to be a kept woman, Teal'c, and I can't believe you would suggest that in _church_ of all places."

"I was not are that securing roommates was forbidden in a chapel. I apologize for my ignorance. Could you explain the meaning of the term 'kept women'?"

She glares at him long enough to find that he's serious, "You really just meant roommates?"

"What meaning did you derive from my words?"

"It's just, a lot of the time when a man asks a women to live with him he has… ideas."

"I believe that all humans have ideas," Teal'c says.

Shelby snorts, "You've got that right."

"I did not intend for my statements to be humorous."

He looks ever so slightly offended so Shelby decides to go easy on the poor man. "Ok, so, like, I thought you wanted me to have sex with you in exchange for a place to live."

"That was not my intention. However, I am confused as to why you were so repulsed by the idea."

"Are you serious?" Shelby squeaks in horror.

"Is this not the core of the marriage contract?" he asks.

"Man alive, I feel sorry for your wife. Marriage should be about a whole lot more than just sex for a place to stay."

"It is also about the joint creation and raising of offspring," Teal'c agrees.

"But it's about more than that. It's supposedta be a partnership. Two people going through life together."

There is a long pause, and then Teal'c says, "Marriages in my country are not like this."

"That's too bad," Shelby says seriously.

"Indeed," Teal'c replies.

**Two Week Later**

Jack walks into Sam's lab, and leans against her lab bench as if he really needs it to support himself. "Boyd gave us permission to pick up Em from daycare, right?"

"Yeah, he signed us up in the front, mostly for sleepovers, and stuff, why?"

Jack looks at her, and she can see that something is horribly wrong.

"What is it?" she asks.

"He's under attack, or something. I'm not quite sure. His IDC code was coming in super-slow."

"I have to go to the control room, and you've got to get Em out of day care."

"Sam," his voice is wrought with terror.

She turns to him, examining his eyes.

"What am I supposed to tell her?"

Sam's stomach drops out from under her. "Tell her, I'm doing my best to bring her daddy home."

-0-0-0-

It's dark outside. Why is it dark outside? It's only one-thirty in the afternoon. And it's certainly not overcast, he can see every star in the sky.

He knocks on the door of the daycare, but it's closed.

If he didn't know better, he'd think it was the middle of the night, but it's one thirty in the afternoon. He swears. I mean, he couldn't be this off on the time, could he?

He snaps his cell phone open, and dials his own home number. Jacob answers, "Jack, where the hell are you?"

"I'm trying to pick up Emma, her dad is sorta… stuck at work," Jack says. 'Stuck at work' doesn't even begin what's happening to Boyd, but Jack isn't sure how else he could describe it without moving deep into classified territory.

"I was thinking you were probably stuck at work, but you could have at least put a call in if you were going to be that late," Jacob says.

"What are you talking about? I wasn't due home until five o'clock tonight."

"Yes, and that was four hours ago. Jack, I've been trying to call you all evening. Emma's daycare called, looking for you guys, when her father didn't pick her up from day care."

"Did you get her, is she there now?"

"No, I wasn't on her accepted pick-up list; they wouldn't let me take her."

"Where is she now?" Jack says with crowing panic.

"I'm sorry Jack, social services took her into temporary care. She doesn't have any family around."

"I know, that's why Sam and I are supposed to be in charge of her whenever her dad can't be," he groans, running his fingers through his hair, "I really screwed this one up."

"How exactly did you lose that many hours?" Jacob asks.

"I don't know, but I have to find Emma. Are Ty and Hannah ok?"

"They're fine, both sound asleep."

"I never realized until this moment how valuable it is to have family around that you can rely on."

"Jack, did Henry die?"

"Not yet. Sam's working on it," Jack says quickly.

"You go bring that little girl home."

**The Next Day**

It turns out that there isn't much you can do by way of finding out what they did with a little girl who was placed in foster care when it is past business hours, so after leaving a couple of messages, he goes home to his own children. He tried to call his wife, but just like his father-in-law said, she's unreachable.

The next morning, he tries to call in sick to work, but he doesn't get through.

He is outside of the social service's door when it opened.

He has to tell his rather vague story about her father being 'unexpectedly indisposed during his classified work for the United States Air force' and flashes the paperwork that makes him Emma's legal guardian in the case of Boyd's death before he even gets to the see the little girl.

She spent the night at the house of a nice older couple who apparently hadn't been completely clued into the story.

"Your father's here, Emma," the women says when she opens the door to see Jack standing there.

Emma runs to the door, and her smile fades when she sees who it is. "That's not my Daddy," she says nearly in tears.

The woman looks at Jack in confusion.

"Honey, your Daddy got stuck at work. You're going to stay with Sam and I until he comes home."

"When is Daddy coming home?" she asks.

"I'm not sure, Emma," he says.

She reaches up her hands to Jack, and he takes her into his arms, "It's going to be ok, sweetie. Everything is going to be just fine," as he carries her to his truck.

**Three Days Later**

Jack knows that he should probably go back to work. But he can't do that to Emma.

She's super-clingy ever since she got left at day care.

"Where are you going, Jack?" she asks.

"To the bathroom," he says, barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

"Ok," she says shifting from foot to foot.

"Honey, I'm only going to be a minute, why don't you go play with Ty?"

"I'm fine."

He kneels down, "Honey, I promise that is not a magic door that is going to whisk me away from you forever."

"Did my Daddy disappear through a magic door?" she asks.

"Honey, did your Daddy tell you about what he did for work?" Jack asks.

She nods. "The magic door took him away forever, didn't it?" she whispers.

"I don't know, honey," he says, with far more honesty than he meant to.

"Did it take Sam away forever, too?"

It's not that the thought hadn't occurred to Jack. But he has been trying to push the thought into the corners of his mind. Now he is confronted with the thought out of the mouth of a child.

"I hope not," he chokes out.

"Jack, please don't go to work," she pleads.

"I promise you I'm not going to go to work until this is figured out," he says.

"Jack, what is going to happen to me if Daddy doesn't come back?"

"Honey, you're going to live here until your Daddy comes back."

"Thank you, Jack," she says, wrapping her tiny arms around the man.

**Eleven Days Later**

"Jack!" Sam's voice rings out on the phone.

"Sam, where are you?" she asks panicked.

"I'm sorry, the phones weren't working. We were out of time with the rest of the world."

"You were gone for two weeks, Sam! Your kids missed you. Your kids were starting to think that you were never coming home. Hell, I was starting to think that you were never coming home."

"Jack, it was less than a day for me. I didn't realize… two weeks?" Sam says in awe.

"Yeah, two weeks," he says his anger leaving. "I'm sorry I didn't come back."

"No, you couldn't have… two weeks."

"Henry?" Jack asks, unable to avoid the question any longer.

"Jack, I'm sorry."

"He's dead?" Jack asks.

"Technically he's missing in action. But he's not coming back, Jack. Don't tell Emma until I get there, Jack," Sam says.

"It's been two weeks, honey. She's already grieving her father, and you."

There is a long pause, and then there are tears in her eyes when she says, "I should have been there."

"You were trying to save his father, Sam; that was the right thing to do."

"I lost two weeks without kids, Jack."

"It's better than three years."

-0-0-0-

Jack doesn't tell Emma that Sam is coming home. It's not because he wants it to be a surprise. The simple truth is he can't imagin a conversation in which he lets her knows that Sam is coming home, and in which she doesn't find out about her dad. And he promised not to tell her about that until Sam got here.

And the key turns in the lock, and there she is.

"Mommy!" Ty says, flinging himself into her arms, crying.

Emma runs out of the room, sobbing.

"I'll take care of that," Jack says, trying to follow after Emma.

"Jack, you've been taking care of everything for two weeks. I've got this one," Sam says.

"Come here, bud," Jack says, trying to take Ty out of his mother's arms.

He shakes his head and holds onto her with a death grip.

"It's ok," Sam says softly.

She carries Ty sun up the stairs, and tries a couple of rooms before he finds Emma under the bed in her own bedroom.

"Honey," she says, putting the kid down and sticking her head under the bed.

"The glowing-eyed monsters killed him, didn't they?"

"Not exactly. Honey, there is this thing called a black hole. And it's sucking your Daddy inside."

"So we're going with unflinching honesty. Funny, that's not the way I thought we were playing it," Jack says from atop the bed.

"And it killed my Daddy?" she asks.

"Not really, honey, but he's never going to be able to come back. Time is slower near a black hole. That's why I was gone so long."

"Can we do this with a little bit less physics, honey? I think we're losing her," Jack offers.

"He's still alive somewhere?" Emma asks.

"Yeah, honey, he is."

"And it doesn't hurt, wherever he is?" she asks nervously.

"No," Sam says.

"But I'm never going to see him again?"

Sam shakes her head.

"No honey, I'm sorry."

Emma crawls toward her under the bed, and Sam pulls her out and holds her tight in her arms, "Did I ever tell you that my Mommy died when I was little? Well, a lot older than you, but still little?"

Emma shakes her head.

"I'm sorry I haven't been around for the last couple of weeks. I know you needed me, and I won't let it happen again."

"I want my Daddy," Emma cries.

"I know you do, sweetie. I tried really hard to bring him back to you."

"I want my Daddy," Emma says.

Ty clings to his father nervously.

"Come on, bud," Jack says, knowing that he has to shield this child from the other one's grief.

And he realizes with shock he just thought of Emma as his daughter.


	37. End Part 3

**One Month Later**

Janet grins as she sees the test result. She slips it into the pocket of the lab coat, and walks out of the infirmary calmly. She only manages to walk calmly because she knows that she doesn't want anyone to follow her, and if she breaks into a run now, she's going to have a herd of panicked medical staff on her tail.

As soon as she's out of sight of the infirmary though, she breaks into a run. When passersby see the good doctor sprinting in heals they slam themselves against the wall to stay out of her way. No-one wants to be responsible for slowing her down and possibly costing someone their life.

But no-one's life is at risk.

She bursts into her husband's office without knocking, sits down on his lap, and gives him the sort of kiss that makes him want to lock the door and give the boys in security the kind of tape that could make a Kardashian famous. He resists the urge, and pulls away from her, "Do I have an alien virus to thank for this afternoon romance?"

She giggles, "Nope, I'm just really excited."

"Ok, can you tell me the news so I can be excited too?"

She pulls the stick out of her pocket.

He stares at it. "No way."

"Yes way."

"It can't be."

"Daniel, I'm a doctor, it is."

"No, it was going to take years for us to get pregnant."

"Are you regretting trying right away?" Janet asks worriedly.

"No, I just can't believe it. We're having a baby. We're going to have to change the guest room into a nursery. But I think we should probably keep the baby in the bedroom with us for a while. Maybe even in the bed. I know a lot of people don't do that in America, but there are many societies in which it is commonplace. And it helps with breastfeeding, I mean, if you're planning on doing that…"

"Daniel, stop," Janet says, putting a hand on his arm, "I'm only three weeks along, we do not have to decide all of our child-rearing policies right now."

Daniel's eyes are wet, "We're having a baby."

"A little tiny Dr. Jackson," Janet says.

"As long as it's got as much of your doctor as mine," Daniel responds.

She smiles, "Admit that this baby has an amazing father."

"His mother is pretty amazing," Daniel says.

"Someday, I am really going to make you say it."

"It," he says, capturing her mouth in a kiss.

-0-0-0-

Cassie has seen Daniel dance a total of twice in her life. Once at her father-daughter dance, and once at his wedding. Now he's dancing around the kitchen as he sets the table.

"You're certainly cheerful tonight," she says with a giggle.

He puts the plates down on the table, and grabs Cassie's arms to twirl her, "Yeah, I'm really happy."

"Any particular reason?" Cassie asks.

Daniel looks at Janet, "You're going to be a big sister."

Cassie freezes, and pulls away from his dancing, "Mom, you're pregnant?"

Janet nods.

Cassie's eyes fill with tears, and she turns and runs out of the room.

"What is she upset about?" Cassie asks.

"I've got this one," Daniel says quietly.

He goes up to her room, and knocks on the door.

"Go away!"

He pushes the door open, "I'm sorry, that's not an option right now."

She's lying face down on her bed, and he sits next to her. "I love you, Cassie," he says softly.

"But not as much as you are going to love your real kid."

"Real? Sweetie, you are my 'real' kid. And I'm not going to love this new biological kid more than you. It's impossible to love anybody more than I love you."

"I'm not yours. Not really."

"Honey, adoption, by definition, means you becoming someone else's child."

"Maybe, but Mom adopted me. You didn't. I'm your step-kid. Less than that, I'm your adopted step-kid."

Daniel takes a deep breath, "Cassie, you know that my parents died too, right?" she turns over to look at him, and doesn't miss the fact that tears are squeezing out of the corner of his eyes. "I was a foster child. Foster children are always temporary. I didn't have anyone that I could ever call "mom" or "dad". I know what it is like to live with that uncertainty. To never feel wanted. And if you honestly felt that, if I honestly made you feel that for one second, then I am really a failure as a parent. And I am so, so sorry."

Cassie looks up at him, feeling like she should be the one apologizing. "But this kid, you're going to have it ever since it's born. You're going to love it more."

"No," he says.

"I'm sorry," she says, believing him for the first time.

"Well, if after this kid comes, you ever, even for one second, feel like you're not getting the attention you deserve, you let us know, and we'll give you the attention."

"Babies need a lot of attention, you can't just stop feeding it or whatever to pay attention to me. I mean, the baby is going to need you, and I don't _need_ you."

Daniel smiles, "Well, in case you didn't notice, you actually have two parents. So if the baby needs something, one of us can take care of that, and one of us can take care of you. Your needs are just as important as hers, even if they're more emotional and less physical. I promise, there will always be enough love for everyone in this family. And when this little baby grows up, she's going to love her big sister a whole bunch too. So it's actually going to make more love, not less."

"Sorry I overreacted."

"You're allowed to have your emotions," he says, kissing her forehead, "And I want you to always tell me when you're upset about something. I like being able to solve your problems."

"Thanks, Daniel," Cassie says.

And he doesn't miss that she isn't calling him 'Dad'.

-0-0-0-

"Is she ok?" Janet says when he comes back into the kitchen. She's stirring a pot as if she were slaying her enemy.

"She's going to be fine. She think we won't love her as much now that we have a biological kid."

"And you told her that she was crazy, right?"

"In more polite words, yeah, I did. I also promised that if she asked for attention after the baby came we'd drop everything and look after her."

"If there are two of us."

"There will be."

"Unless you're off-world," Janet points out.

"Yeah, I guess I should have added that exception on," Daniel says.

"There is going to be more than enough love to go around."

"Janet, there is something that I wanted to ask you for a long time. Since we got married actually. But I didn't ask, because I was protecting your feelings. But I didn't realize that Cassie's feelings were involved too, and her feelings matter more than yours do. Not because I love her more," he quickly amends, "But just because she's a kid, and you're an adult."

"You're right, so what is it?" Janet asks.

"I want to adopt her," he says, looking directly into his wife's eyes.

"Why do you think that would upset me?" Janet asks.

"Seriously? The wedding night melt down?" he says.

"That wasn't about you being her father. That was about me being her mother."

"Ok, well, she mentioned that I'm just her step-father. I don't want her to feel like that. I want her to know that I chose her. I choose to marry her mother. But I also choose to be her father. They were separate decisions. Connected, but also separate."

Janet nods, "I'm fine with it. You are her dad. I don't care if the paperwork agrees with the truth."

"Thank you," he says, walking up behind her and kissing her temple. Then he reaches his hands around and places them on her still-small stomach.

**The Next Day**

"Do you have a lot of homework tonight?" Daniel asks when he picks Cassie up from school the next afternoon.

"Not much, no."

"Good, because I have a form I'd like you to fill out," he says, passing a paper back to her.

Cassie stares at it for a minute, "Wait, you're going to have a kid, _and_ you're adopting?"

"Babe, I'm adopting you."

"No, I don't want you to adopt me just because I freaked out yesterday."

"Cassie, I wanted to adopt you ever since I married your mother. I just didn't bring it up, because I didn't want to hurt your mother's feelings."

"Well, I don't want to hurt mom's feelings either."

"She's ok, with it. Really. So if you want this, it's done."

"Yeah," Cassie says looking bashfully down. "Ah, in home ec I've been working on something for a while. I finished it today. Originally I was going to give it away to charity. Now I really want the baby to have it," she says, pulling a teddy bear out of her backpack and sliding it into the front seat.

"The baby is going to love it," Daniel tells her.

-0-0-0-

"Sam, you're a girl, right?" Emma asks, running up to Sam when she walks into the house, still wearing her fatigues.

"Yeah, I am."

"But you're a soldier, too?"

"It's possible to be both. Girls can do anything that they want to do."

"What if I want to be a daddy?"

"Well, girls can't be daddies. But they can be mommies."

"My mommy didn't want to be a mommy," Emma says gravely.

"And she was a fool. But let me tell you, I want to be your mommy."

Emma throws her hands around her.

"So can Ty be a mommy?"

"Nope, he's going to have to be a daddy."

"Even if he wears a dress?"

Sam ponders this question for a little bit. "No, even if he wore a dress he'd still be a daddy."

"Ty doesn't wear dresses anymore," Emma pouts.

"I've noticed," Sam says, and she can't help but smile at the thought.


	38. Part 4 Chapter 1

**Spoilers for Legacy**

"Did you hear that?" Daniel asks.

"I don't hear anything," Cassie says, turning back to her homework.

"They're calling to me," Daniel says, standing up and opening the glass bookshelf. Through his eyes, he sees a Stargate's event horizon.

Through Cassie's eyes, she sees a lot of old books. "Mom…" Cassie says with a warning voice.

"Can't you see it?" Daniel says in confusion, turning to his daughter.

A hand reaches out of the closet to grab Daniels' hand, and he starts to scream for help.

-0-0-0-

Daniel opens his eyes to see Janet looking at him from her seat next to her infirmary bed.

"What happened?" she asks.

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

"I don't know. My Gran swears she saw her sister after she had died."

"I never did, there has to be another explanation."

"Who did you see?"

"The Goa'ulds that were dead in the chamber."

"In our bookshelf?"

Daniel nods his head.

She reaches over to grab and squeeze his hand. "So, is this the first time you've ever hung out in the infirmary when you weren't working?"

"It is, and I hope it's the last time. I don't want my husband to get in the habit of getting hurt."

"The clumsy archeologist, you've got to be kidding. So can I get out of here now?"

"Not yet."

"What do you mean, 'not yet'?" he says, his stomach twisting, knowing already where this is going.

"Daniel," Janet says slowly.

"They think I'm nuts, don't they?"

Janet just looks down at the bed, and doesn't say anything.

"What about you, do you think I'm nuts?" Daniel asks.

"Well, honey, you've got to be a little bit crazy in order to have married me," Janet teases.

**The Next Day**

"How are you feeling, honey?" Janet says, walking into the VIP room her husband is staying in and giving him a quick peck on the lips.

"I'm fine. Did McKenzie tell you that they think I'm schizophrenic?"

Janet nods her head.

"You know that's a genetic disease right?" he asks, looking toward her stomach.

"Daniel, they think that this was caused by travel through the gate. It's not likely that this is something that you are going to pass on to our kid."

"Janet, there are things that I never told you. Things I should have told you a long time ago. Certainly before we started to try for a baby."

"Daniel, what are you talking about? There is nothing you ever could have said that would have made me change my mind about having a baby with you."

His face crumbles, "Janet, I'm not the first person in my family to have mental illness."

"I didn't even know you had family besides… you know, your parents," Janet says softly.

"I didn't want you to know, I was selfish. My Grandpa, Nick. He saw giant aliens in Belize, and he's in a mental hospital right now."

"That's why he couldn't take you after your parents died?"

"No, he wasn't in the hospital when my parents died. He just didn't want me," Daniel says, looking down.

"Hey, Daniel," she says, forcing his eyes back onto her, "It doesn't matter who didn't want you before. Everyone wants you know."

"Even though I'm damaged goods?"

"You're not damaged, you're perfect," Janet says, running a hand across his face and under his chin.

He stares at her in horror, "Oh, God!"

"What's wrong?" Janet asks calmingly.

"Nothing," Daniel says, looking away from her.

She looks into his eyes expectantly, trying to figure out what he needs.

He makes a grab for the air over her shoulder.

"Daniel?" she asks, taking a step back from him.

"There is a Goa'uld. I can't let it go into you! I can't lose you!" he screams.

"Daniel! There is nothing there!" Janet shouts.

**Two Days Later**

Was this what it was like for Nick? Just a big empty room, and waiting, but waiting for nothing?

And the things that he'd seen. The things that weren't real, they had felt so real. And if they weren't real, could he ever believe anything ever again?

"Daniel are you ok?" Janet says, rushing into the room.

"I'm fine. You should stay with Cassie."

"She's fine, the O'Neills have her. I'm worried about you," she says, walking up and putting a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he says sadly.

"For what?" she asks.

"For being such a head case," he says with a nervous laugh.

"This is not your fault, Daniel."

"It doesn't change the fact that I am not there for you," he says.

Her lip quivers, "Daniel, you're going to get better, you're going to come home."

"No," he says shaking his head, "They're not going to let me leave," he puts a hand on her stomach, "And our baby is never going to know his dad."

"Daniel, don't say that."

He grabs her by the elbows, and breaths with more panicked breath, "They're coming."

"No, honey, no-one is coming, it's just me and you here, and you're safe."

"They're coming," he says with a pained expression, he knows that what he is saying doesn't make any sense, but he is thinking it so hard that he can't stop himself from saying it.

Daniel looks over Janet's shoulder, and says, "I told you, it's right there." And then he begins the laugh. It was a laugh she had heard when he was high from the sarcophagus, or when he had two glasses of wine instead of one.

It wasn't the laugh of a crazy person. It was the laugh her Daniel made when chemicals were messing with his brain.

They did have him on a lot of drugs… she wondered.

And then the orderlies came in, and whisked him away.

**Two Days Later**

"You don't have to walk on eggshells around me anymore. I'm better now," Daniel tells Janet when she arrives to see him.

"I heard, do you know why?"

"You believe me?" he asks in surprise.

"Of course I do."

"Why?" he asks with a raised eyebrow, "I mean, I'm glad you do. I'm just not sure why you would believe me."

"I know my husband, and I know when my husband isn't himself. It was chemicals, Daniel. I knew that."

Daniel smiles at her, "I really love you, you know that, right?"

She smiles at him and nods.

"So you can spring me from here, doctor?" he asks.

"I can sure try."

**One Day Later**

"Daniel, I wanted to come visit you, but Mom wouldn't let me," Cassie pouts as Daniel comes through the door.

"Your mom made the right call. I wasn't really in a state to see my daughter," he says.

"You're ok now?" Cassie asks.

"I am," he says, holding out his hands to her.

She runs into his arms, sobbing.

His arms stay out for a couple of seconds before they wrap around her in a tight hug.

"I thought I might not ever see you again," she whispers.

"Not going to happen. I plan on sticking around for a long time, babe."

Cassie pulls away, her eyes red from the tears.

"We're forever, this family," he tells her with a smile.

**Two Weeks Later**

When Daniel rounds the corner into the infirmary for his post-mission check-up, he was surprised to see his wife lying in an infirmary bed.

"Since when do you take naps on hospital beds while on duty?" he teases.

Then he sees her face, and he stops joking. "No," he says.

"Daniel," she says, holding out her hands to him.

"No," he says, crossing his arms in front of his body.

"Honey," she says softly, standing up.

He rushes across the room and strong-arms her into sitting back down.

"Daniel, I can get up."

"You lost the baby, didn't you?"

"I did, honey. I'm so sorry."

Daniel leans his forehead against hers in silent agony. "When can you come home?"

"I'm fine to go home now. I was just waiting for you."

"No, you need to take care of yourself."

"Daniel, I am. I really don't even think that I need bed rest, but I'm giving it to myself anyway. Some people who lost a baby this early wouldn't even know they'd been pregnant."

"Janet," he says.

"I know," she says, crying.

He picks her up in a fireman's hold and starts toward the door.

"Daniel Jackson, put me down this second!" she demands.

"You're on bed rest, aren't you?" he says, confused but obeying because of the intensity of her voice.

"I can walk to the car, and if I couldn't, we have wheelchairs. You will never pull a stunt like that ever again."

And she sees his eyes brimming with tears.

"You can carry me again, if it would help," Janet whispers.

-0-0-0-

"Daniel, why are you picking me up? I thought mom was going to come get me," Cassie says as she slips into her step-father's car later that day.

Daniel doesn't answer, and that make Cassie's stomach fall into the floor. When you've never had a tragedy, your mind doesn't go there first. It rebels against the idea of bad things happening, it shields your innocence for as long as it can, even if it is only a couple of extra seconds.

But once you've had tragedy, your mind doesn't protect you anymore. It is forever looking for the bad, expecting the bad. Seeing it where only good exists.

So she sees Daniel's face, and she knows.

"What happened to mom?"

"Your mother is fine," Daniel assures her.

"The baby?"

He looks away.

Cassie crumbles like a rag doll into the seat, and starts bawling.

He's shocked; he hadn't expected her to take it this hard. She took the death of her entire world with more grace that he'd taken the death of his parents. But this, this was raw grief, and in the face of it his own grief becomes more painful.

"I'm sorry," she manages to stammer out.

"Sorry? What are you sorry for?" Daniel asks in genuine confusion.

"When you first told me that you were going to have a baby, I didn't want you to have a baby. But I didn't want that baby to die. I swear I didn't mean to kill it."

Daniel pulls the girl close to his heart, "Oh, Cassie, love, this is not your fault."

"Why?" she asks, looking at him.

"I don't know, honey; no one does. These things just happen sometimes. Actually, these things happen quite a lot when it is very early in the pregnancy. It's not because you did something wrong. It's not because your mother or I did something wrong. It just happened."

"I think it happened because of me, because bad things always happen because of me."

"No, Cassie."

"I'm cursed. My whole planet died, but I survived, and I wasn't meant to survive."

"You were, Cassie. And I've had a lot of people die, too. But they didn't die, because of me, or my luck. They died for reasons, individual reasons that had nothing to do with me."


	39. Part 4 Chapter 2

"I have come to render my assistance with the move," Teal'c informs Shelby, as she gets out of basic training.

"I don't really need no help, all the stuff I've got is right here," Shelby says, heaving a giant duffle bag over her shoulder.

"I have come to understand that helping a person move is a sign of intimacy in this culture."

"Fine, you carry the bag. But don't say intimacy, it's nasty," she says, handing the giant bag over.

"Is this another of the words whose meanings are multiplied?"

"Yeah, double meaning, how are we gonna get there, taxi?"

"I have recently acquired a license for operating a motor vehicle, and have borrowed a vehicle from the O'Neill's for the purpose of transporting us to our new abode."

"When did you learn to drive?"

"1969."

She stares at him for a long second before she starts laughing. "I don't understand how you can say a joke like that with a straight face."

"My statement was not meant to be humorous."

"Right, well, I just have to check out with my officer, and then I'm going to take off," she says with a smile.

She turns back to her fellow airmen, and the other airwomen she went through basic training with, a girl named Rosa, says, "Dude your boyfriend is hot."

"He's not my boyfriend," Shelby corrects.

"Really? 'Cause it sounded like you were living with him, and I can sure as hell tell you're not related."

"We're friends," Shelby says.

"A friend with a really nice ass," Rosa giggles.

-0-0-0-

"And this is your room," Teal'c concludes his tour.

"It's got furniture in it," Shelby says confused.

"I was aware that you did not have any. I hope that the items I selected will be pleasing to you."

"Teal'c, ya can't just buy me a buncha stuff."

"If you want to sell these belongings and purchase ones that are more to your liking, I would not object."

"That's not it, Teal'c. I don't need a big fancy bed, and a nightstand, and a dresser."

"These are the things that people of your culture have in their bedrooms."

"No, not my culture, Teal'c. Maybe the rich people culture all your friends come from. Where I come from, people sleep on the floor or a ratty old mattress. They kept their things in boxes they got for free from the grocery store. They most certainly do not have fancy furniture made out of wood."

Teal'c stares at her for a second, "This is not the world that I have seen portrayed on your television screen."

"No, history is always written by the winners. And people from my 'hood aren't really what you would call winners."

"I think you are a winner," Teal'c says.

"Well, thanks," Shelby says.

"Can you explain more of this culture to me? I think it may be similar to my own."

"Yeah," Shelby smiles.

"I will contact my co-workers to remove the unwanted debris from your room," he says, making a motion toward the phone in the kitchen.

Shelby looks at the bed. "You don't have to do that. It might be nice, for once, to live like the rest of the world."

"My research indicates that the rest of the world doesn't live like Americans."

"True," Shelby says.

"I do like American beds," Teal'c says, sprawling out on Shelby's.

She giggles, "You're not just supposta lay down on someone else's bed."

He jumps up, "I wish someone would make me a list of things which are uncouth in this culture."

"If you could ever make a list like that, you would make a lot of money on it. There are a lot of people out there who want an answer to the exact same question that you do."

"Will you be my Yoda?" he asks.

"What?"

"Are you unfamiliar with the Starwars franchise?"

"No, I know who Yoda is, but I'm just not sure what you are asking me for?"

"Will you help me acclimate to this culture?" Teal'c asks.

Shelby smiles, "Of course I will."

**A Week Later**

Sam smiles as she watches her boys. Jack is oblivious to the fact that his son is copying his every move.

Jack adjusts his baseball cap, and so does Ty.

Jack clears his throat, and so does Ty.

Jack flips a burger on the grill, and Ty flips a mud burger with his spatula.

Ty looks up at his father lovingly, and says, "Daddy, when I grow up I want to be exactly like you."

Jack smiles down at his son. "I'd much rather that you grow up to be exactly like you."

"What about me?" Emma asks, overhearing. "Which Daddy should I grow up to be like?"

Sam breaks in, "I think you can grow up to be like both of your Daddies."

"And your mommy," Jack adds.

"And your Grandpa," Jacob says, lifting the girl up and spinning her around before he sets the girl down.

"But mostly, we just want you to grow up to be you," Jack says as he bends town to tickle the girl.

The sound of sizzling meat makes everyone turn toward the food. "You burnt the meat again, Jack," Sam scolds.

"But don't get your cooking skills from Daddy," Jacob teases.

-0-0-0-

"Teal'c, today was my orientation at the mountain," Shelby says, staring at the man before her with shock on her face.

"You should have told me, and I would have taken you for a meal in the mess in order to celebrate."

"Teal'c, you are so totally missing the point. I went to where you work. I know what you do for a living!"

"I also know what you do for a living," Teal'c says clearly not getting it.

"No, man, I know that your job is to go to other planets."

"Indeed."

"Do you understand how weird that is?"

"My job has always been to other planets," he replies unblinking.

Shelby laughs, "Oh, and that is the far weirder thing. I heard at work, but I'm not sure I can believe it… were you born on another planet?"

"Indeed."

"Holy crap, man, you're a freaking alien? For real?"

"Indeed."

"But you're, like, human, right? Because you look human."

"I am, in fact, Jaffa."

"Ok, but what does that mean, because you totally look human."

Teal'c raises up his shirt slowly.

"Is that a wound?" Shelby asks slowly.

"No, this is what it means to be a Jaffa."

The Goa'uld slowly snacks out of his stomach to catch a couple of seconds in the sunlight. Shelby screams.

"So that is a Jaffa?"

"No, that is a Goa'uld. I am a Jaffa."

"But I thought that the Goa'uld were like the bad guys?"

"They are."

"But you have one, right there," she says, backing away from him.

"On the planet that I came from, people worshiped the Goa'uld. They were our gods. I served the gods for a long time. I was the leader of his army. He was in control of many worlds. I left the serve of the gods, killing many other Jaffa the first time I believed that such an endeavor would be successful."

"That was very brave," Shelby says with a smile. "But why do you still have one of those things inside of you?"

"If I were to remove it, I would die."

"Is it dangerous, like other people?"

"I would never endanger you, or anyone else. When the Goa'uld matures, I will have ample warning. I will try to secure a new symbiote. Short of that, I will remove and execute the one that is within my stomach."

"So they made an entire species of people that were dependent on them."

"One day I am going to free my people from the Goa'uld."

"I'd like to help you with that mission."

"You are doing that."

"Dude, I'm just rearranging the medical cabinet."

"You are reducing the casualties on a tiny force that is going up against the entire universe. Without a good medical staff, we would be quickly defeated."

"Thank you for that."

**Next Week**

Shelby is exhausted when she walks into the house after a full day of school and work. She stops cold when she see a tablecloth on the table, dishes set on it, and two long candle sticks.

Her mouth drops.

"What is this?" she asks suspiciously.

"It is a traditional Earth dinner," he responds.

"This is a romantic dinner," she says with a single eyebrow raised in a way which closely imitates Teal'c's.

"What does this have to do with a period of artwork and literature?"

Shelby rolls her eyes, "Dude, romance is like dating, flirting, staring deeply into one another's eyes."

"And sharing a meal always includes romance? I have shared many meals at the SGC with the people that I work with," he says, confused.

"No, it's just the fanciness of the meal, and the candles," she says glancing at them.

Teal'c stands up, and blows out the candles with one large blow. "Is the meal unromantic now?" he queries.

Shelby laughs, "Sure, T, it's unromantic now."

"I have to nuke the dinner now," he says, moving to the fridge. He pulls out some fast food bags.

Shelby giggles, "Candlelight and fast food."

"The candlelight has been extinguished," Teal'c corrects.

**Three Weeks Later**

Daniel is lying in bed, facing the wall. Janet reaches her arm around him. He doesn't resist, but he also doesn't really participate. Janet figures he's just being extra-gentle with her since the miscarriage.

She appreciates it, but she's ready now.

"Daniel, do you think it's time to try for another baby?"

"No," Daniel says with a cold tone of voice.

"What?" Janet asks sitting up so she can see his face.

"I'm just not sure I want to have another kid."

She pauses, figuring out his soul just by looking at him, "Daniel, you can't be afraid of love."

"Janet, there is a very high death rate among people I love. I know it's not rational to believe that I caused them. But the fact is, they're dying. And I can't do it again. I can't lose anyone else."

"Daniel, losing the baby, that was a random occurrence. This kind of miscarriage doesn't mean that I'm more likely to lose a kid in the future."

"No, but it happens. Kids die."

"Daniel, I could die, so could Cassie."

"I know that," his voice is icy.

"So, what, you're going to walk out our lives?" Janet asks gasping in panic at the thought.

"It won't do any good. I already love you. Besides, death isn't the only kind of leaving that hurts. Nick taught me that. And I would never do that to you, and I sure as hell would never do that to Cassie who's already had way too much loss."

"But you're not willing to love someone new?"

He shakes his head.

"I already love it, though. It doesn't exist. And maybe it's silly. Maybe it's even crazy. But I love this baby we could make. And you telling me 'no' is a kind of loss too. Maybe not like death, but…" she starts to cry.

He gets up to kneel before her on the bed. "I love you. And if having a kid is that important to you, we can try for another."

"And I'll do my best to keep this one safe."

"Janet, losing this baby wasn't your fault."

"I know that, intellectually, I know that. But it was inside of me when it died. How can I not feel responsible for that?"

He reaches over, and kisses his temple.

"So this trying for a baby thing… can we start now?" Janet asks with playful eyes.

"You're ok? I mean… it hasn't been that long."

"Honey, can you please let the doctor in the family worry about the medical things."


	40. Part 4 Chapter 3

**One Day Later**

"So whatits like?" Shelby asks as they stare at the glimmering light of the Stargate.

"It is an artificial wormhole," Teal'c replies.

Shelby rolls her eyes, "I mean, what's it going to feel like when you go through it? I heard that some people throw up."

"Let out a breath and close your eyes right before you walk through the gate."

"You think I am going to throw up," Shelby says, giving her husband an annoyed look.

Teal'c doesn't say anything.

"I am tougher than you think I am," she says.

"You are tougher than me," he says as they step through the gate.

She's too bewildered by the shocking thing that her husband just said to notice the trauma of gate travel.

"Father!" a teenage boy says, running to Teal'c the second that he walks through the gate.

"Ry'ac!" Teal'c replies, hugging the boy close to his chest.

Shelby stands back a bit, and tries to remember if she ever received a hug like that from her father, or any of the father figures her mother thrust into her life after that.

She's pretty sure she didn't.

"Son, this is Shelby, my wife."

Ry'ac looks at her critically. "She is not a Jaffa."

"She is of the Ta'uri."

"Is she a warrior like your friends?"

"No, she is training to be a healer."

"Training? I'm in training! How old is she?"

"Ry'ac, it is considered uncouth to ask a women her age," Teal'c replies.

"That is only if she's old. Shelby is definitely not old," Ry'ac says.

"It's ok, Teal'c. I'm twenty-one," Shelby says, offering a smile to the child.

"Twenty-one? You were married to me long before this child you have married was ever born," Dray'auc says, coming toward them.

"Our pledge has been broken," Teal'c says.

"Still, our marriage lived longer than her, even if it is dead now. Come with me to the house, so we can celebrate a holiday that none of us celebrate," Dray'auc says with stoic sarcasm.

"Actually, my wife does celebrate the Earth holiday of trees which do not die," Teal'c says.

Shelby groans, "You're still missing the point of Christmas."

"There is also a green god with a heart defect who wears a red suit and steals toys from noisy children."

"Alright, that is it, no more television for you," Shelby threatens.

"I used to have my husband all of the time, but now I only get him when his new people give him time off for holidays that he does not understand," Dray'auc says.

"Will the green god steal my staff weapon?" Ry'ac asks.

"No, it is not a toy. It is a training device," Teal'c says.

"And no-one steals toys on Christmas. That is a story, it's fiction. Most of the stuff on TV is fictional. Santa comes around and GIVES good children gifts on Christmas. And he might just bring you some too, Ry'ac."

"Is Santa the god of Christmas?" Teal'c asks.

"No, Jesus is the God of Christmas. He's also the God of Easter, and every other holiday and day that isn't a holiday. He is just plain God," Shelby says finally, becoming annoyed with her husband's ignorance.

"She is radical in the service of her god. You left the service of one god to serve another," Dray'auc says.

"It's amazing, but I am pretty sure that your family actually hates me a lot more than my family does you," Shelby whispers to her husband.

"We can find other places to lodge tonight, if you are in any way uncomfortable."

"I'm fine," she says, shooting him a sideways smile.

-0-0-0-

Shelby is observing the Jaffa women's conversation over their work, and trying to figure out how to enter herself into the conversation or the work, when suddenly she feels a staff weapon slam hard into her shoulder. She turns toward her attacker, and is thrown one of the small staff weapons that the children of Chulak first learn to fight with.

She manages to catch the weapon, but only at an awkward angle. By the time she's reformed her grip, the back of the staff weapon has hits her between the shoulder blades.

Another blow comes toward her, and she blocks it with her staff weapon held out straight in front of her.

She could try to hit him now, but she doesn't want to be the sort of person who hits kids. So she just prepares to block the next blow.

The next hit is to the back of her knees, and it causes her to fall to the ground. Ry'ac pounces on top of her, and holds the staff weapon against her throat. It causes her some pain, but is a long way from being anything more than a minor inconvenience.

"Dude, Why are you attacking me?" she asks the boy, pushing the words past the staff weapon.

"If I were attacking you, you would no longer draw breath," he replies.

"Ry'ac!" Teal'c exclaims when he sees his son in the victory position over his wife, "Release her!"

"I was only sparring. A child of eight would have been able to do far better than she," Ry'ac says with spite in his voice.

"She is not Jaffa! She has received no training, and you will not attack her again!" Teal'c demands.

Ry'ac pulls away from her, and Teal'c extends his hand to his wife, and pulls her off the ground with more force than is strictly necessary.

"I wasn't trying to beat you! You are a child, and I don't beat children!" Shelby says, dusting herself off.

"I am not a child! I have been through my prim'ta!" Ry'ac shouts.

Ry'ac starts to walk away, but Teal'c catches him by the cuff of his shirt. "You will apologize to Shelby."

"Only after she does," he says with distain.

"She has done nothing which would warrant an apology," Teal'c tells his son.

"She stole my father from me," Ry'ac says reproachfully.

Teal'c is so surprised that he lets the child go, and Ry'ac squirms away.

"Look, I'm going to dial Earth. You stay here with your son," Shelby says, walking away from the stunned Jaffa.

"Shelby, I will accompany you back to your planet."

"No, stay here with your family," she says moving farther away from him.

"When I married you, you became my family," he says, continuing to follow her.

"No, your son is all that matters."

He tilts his head at her looking confused, "You matter as well."

"He is your kid, and so help me, I will not be the reason you are not a good father to him."

"Your own father chose not to have an active role in your life," Teal'c states.

"Yeah, and I knew you left your son. It should have bothered me before. But seeing it, seeing him… Your son needs you, Teal'c, and I did not stand between the two of you."

"I left my son long before I met you."

"I know, but he really hates me, dude, and if I leave, you'll get quality time with him."

Teal'c looks at her for a while, "You are a part of me. He cannot love me without loving you."

Shelby starts to cry, "You talk so good, Teal'c."

He gives her a hug, "Your father made a critical error in not choosing to spend more time with you."

"Teal'c you're making the same mistake with Ry'ac. You're a father. Sometimes I'm selfish, and I want to keep you all to myself. But the fact is, Ry'ac needs you more than I do, and he deserves to be your priority. You have to take him back Earth with you… him and your ex-wife."

"I cannot do that."

"He's your son, Teal'c, and no matter how much time you want to spend with him, you just can't do it when they are on a different word."

"Shelby, when we first met, you frequently referenced the fact that I was a prisoner. This was untrue, but for my son it would be true. He would not be permitted to leave the base, attend educational institutions, and engage in social interaction with others of his age. It would be no sort of a life for a child."

"Then you have to come here more often. You have to see your son every single day that you have off."

"With your work schedule, that would leave us no time to interact with one another," Teal'c says.

"But Ry'ac," she protests.

"Has a mother and step-father* who provide him with adequate care."

"And you think I am not receiving adequate care?" she asks.

His lips quirk almost imperishably in a smile, "There are things which I can take care of that no one else can."

Her stomach twists, and she giggles in spite of herself, "I can't decide if you trying to talk dirty is funnier or hotter."

He smiles at her.

"But I can take care of myself. I'm not your child," she says seriously.

"I know you are not."

"I'm young enough to be your child, or hell, your grandchild, your great-grandchild!"

"That is untrue," he protests.

"You're over 100! That is more than enough time for a few generations."

He touches her cheek, "You are not my granddaughter."

"You lived a lifetime before I was even born, and you're going to live a lifetime after I am dead. How could I ever mean as much to you as you do to me?" she sobs with tears in her eyes.

"I did not live until I met you," Teal'c says.

"I thought I got all of those cheesy romance movies out of the house," she teases.

"I drew breath before I met you. I ate, I kal'no'reamed, I worked, and I fought. I was married and had a child. But I never loved. Not before you."

"Teal'c," she says.

"And I will not love after you are gone. This life I live with you, it is the only one that matters. I will not have another life after you are gone."

"You have to Teal'c, I want you to be happy."

"There is much time before we have to worry about this. This is the benefit of falling in love with a particularly young Earthling."

She laughs at him. "You should find your son."

He nods his head, and takes a couple of steps away from her before he turns back, and gives his wife a searing kiss.

-0-0-0-

Shelby sits cross-legged on the grass, pretending to study a textbook that she brought along. She's really focused on the scene before her. Her husband sparring with his son.

He's letting his son win of course. Teal'c used to be first prime, and his son was still a child. But he isn't going easy on his son. He's allowing blows to come to his son, and she can't take it.

"Teal'c, you're going to hurt him."

"I am strong, father," the child says, puffing his chest out.

Teal'c turns to her, "I would never hurt my son."

Shelby rubs her arms nervously, refusing to say anything else.

"She's a scaredy cat," Ry'ac teases.

Teal'c kneels down before his son. "Ry'ac, there is something that you need to understand. When Shelby was a little girl…" he glances at his wife. He knows that she doesn't want him to tell, but he also knows he needs to. "She was hurt by her mother's husband."

"How?" Ry'ac asks.

"He hit her. He kept hitting her. She had bruises on her when we first meet. So you can understand why she wants to make sure that you would not get hurt."

"Father, why did she not fight back?"

"She left before he could hurt her again," Teal'c says avoiding the question.

Ry'ac walks in front of her, and hands her a training staff. "My father taught me to do battle with those who are unjust. I would like to train you as well."

Shelby doesn't really want to learn to fight. But she knows that this is the best way for her to bond with the boy in front of her, and she senses that it might also be one of the best ways for her to bond with her husband.

"I would really appreciate any training that you could offer me," She tells the boy, trying to imitate the formal Jaffa method of speech.

"Well, to start with, your grip on the staff weapon is pretty good. But your stance is awful. That's why I knocked you down. I don't usually go for that, I prefer intimidation, and making the opponent back up. But you were just begging to be knocked on your mik'ta."

"Ry'ac!" Teal'c scolds.

Ry'ac turns his face toward his father, clearly wondering what he did wrong.

"Use appropriate language around your stepmother."

"Yes, father," Ry'ac says respectfully.

***Ok, there is the logic behind Ry'ac still having a stepfather. Dray'ac's new husband betrayed Teal'c because Teal'c kissed Dray'ac. If Teal'c was with Shelby by then, he would not have been kissing his ex-wife. So Dray'ac's second husband wouldn't have died, and therefore Ry'ac has a stepfather. **


	41. Part 4 Chapter 4

**Two Weeks Later**

"Look what my teacher wrote on my rort card!" Ty exclaims, holding the piece of paper much too close to his mother's face for her to see. It's the first time that the kids have ever received true grades. At the end of preschool, the parents were given a list of things that their children could and couldn't do, but it wasn't the same as tacking a letter onto them. Even if the letters were "E" "S" "N" and "U" instead of the more traditional alphabet.

"You mean report card, honey," Sam says, pulling it back far enough so she can see her son's grades. He's got all 'S's for 'satisfactory', apart from the 'E's in P.E. and reading.

"This is great."

"Did you see the note by the smelly sticker?" he asks bouncing.

She reads it out loud, "Ty is an emotionally mature child with a great work ethic. He is a great reader, and shows great enthusiasm for his work. He is a pleasure to have in our class."

Ty beams up at her.

"This is a really great report card, honey, I'm really proud of you!" she exclaims. She turns to Emma, who is kicking a rock with her shoe, "How did you do honey?"

"My teacher didn't give cards," the child says, not looking up.

"Are you sure? Because you go to the same school." Sam asks, looking back at the school building to assure herself that she could go in and ask if her current tactic doesn't work out the way she plans.

"She's a liar, mom! She had me read her report card to her a second ago."

"I'm not a liar!" Emma protests.

"You told a lie, and that's what a liar does," Ty retorts.

"Tyler, let your sister be," Sam says, picking up the girl. Her older children are too large to be picked up, especially in front of their friends. But Sam can't help it.

"I was lying," Emma says.

"I know, but you're still not a liar," Sam says, looking at her daughter.

"Momma, if I was really your baby, would I be smart like Ty?"

"Baby girl, you are my baby, and you _are_ smart," Sam tells her.

"Nuh-uh, Mommy," Emma says, squirming around until she produces a crumpled sheet of paper.

Sam talks it, and soothes it out. 'N' for 'needs improvement' in reading and writing, and the dreaded 'U' unsatisfactory for math. The rest are all 'S', apart from a single 'E' in P.E.

"This isn't so bad," Sam says, smiling at her daughter.

"But the teacher doesn't like me," Emma pouts.

Emma's eyes scan down to the 'teacher's comments' part of the page. "Emma likes to visit when she should be working, and her work suffers because of this. She has poor organizational skills. She has difficultly with transitions."

Sam clothes her eyes. Must it always be all good or all bad? Couldn't the teacher have said something good about her daughter?

"You're teacher loves you, she says you're a beautiful social girl who is really good at P.E." Sam says. It's not completely different than what the teacher says, but it has a much better spin on it.

"You're not mad?" Emma asks, hiding her face.

"Were you trying your hardest?" Sam asks.

Emma nods her head.

"Then why would I be mad?"

"I hearded some older kids talking, 'n they said that if they have bad grades, their parents ground them."

"Well, that's not happening, Em."

Her forehead crinkles, "Is it 'cause I'm not really your daughter? If Ty got bad grades, would you ground _him_?"

"It would depend how hard he was trying," Sam says with a slow smile. "Do you have any homework? Something we can do to help you?"

Emma shakes her head.

"Listen, babe, I'm going to go talk to your teacher for a second. You guys can come along and wait for me in the hallway."

-0-0-0-

"Hi, I'm Emma's mom," Sam says, poking her head into the classroom.

"Mrs. Claire, it's nice to meet you," the women says, extending her hand.

"Ah, so Emma just gave me her report card, and I was wondering if there was anything that we could do at home to help her out."

"I've told the kids a bunch of times that they can take their reading book home. And has she even been practicing her flash cards?"

"I'm sorry, what flash cards?" Sam says.

"They have flash cards of the high-frequency words. Simple small words that make up 50% of all written language."

"Do you have a copy of them?" Sam asks.

"I'm sure Emma has them, they're probably in her desk," the teacher says, gesturing vaguely to a side of the room.

Sam walks over to the desks, and sees one that has Emma's name, traced in perfect D'Nealian script.

She opens the desk to find the biggest disaster she has seen in her entire life. Seriously, she could not imagine there could be so much mess in one desk. There is no way she's going to find the flash cards, but she manages to fish out a reading textbook.

Sam turns to the teacher, "You don't have another copy?"

"I can't make dozens of copies of everything for each kid. They lose everything."

"Ok," Sam says meekly, "Her biggest problem seems to be math. Can you tell me what we're working on?"

"Right now we're working on understanding place value."

Sam was a bit disappointed. If the teacher had said 'addition' or 'subtraction', it would have been easier. But she'll work with what she has.

"Thank you," Sam says, and makes her way into the hallway where she takes a hold of Emma's hand and gives it a quick squeeze. Her children follow along, and Sam works really hard focusing on not crying.

-0-0-0-

"Sorry I'm so late, babe," Jack says when he arrives home near to midnight.

"It's ok, I know that you had a mission today," Sam says, and her voice sounds icy even in her own ears.

"Is everything ok?" Jack asks, sitting down on the bed next to her still wearing his clothes.

"Report cards came out today," Sam says.

"And…" Jack says.

"Do you want the good news or the bad news first?" Sam asks.

"Lead with the good."

"Ty is doing great," she says, pushing the report card toward him.

He gives it a quick glance, not even enough time to read all the comments before he asks, "And Emma?"

Sam starts to cry, and Jack pulls her into a tight hug in order to comfort her, even though he desperately wants to press her for information.

When the sobbing stops, she pushes away and hands him the report card. He takes it from her hand and gives her a smile before he looks at it.

"This isn't so bad, Sammy."

"I'm a horrible mother. I didn't even know that she was struggling."

"Neither did I, Sam."

"What are we going to do?"

"It's kindergarten. These grades don't actually matter. We'll get her some extra help, and everything is going to be fine."

"It's just… you always assume your kids are going to be above-average, perfect, I never really considered what it would be like if our kid struggled," Sam admits.

"Think how she feels," Jack says.

Sam snorts. "I don't have to imagine that. She told me. She's terrified that this is because she's not really our kid, and that we are going to punish her for it."

"This might actually be because she's not ours," Jack says thoughtfully.

"Jack!" she scolds in surprise.

"I mean… she just lost her dad a few months ago, that could affect her grade."

"Right, of course, I should have thought of that. I should have told the teacher that," Sam says hanging her head.

"Babe," he says, lifting her chin up, "You were blindsided there. We can also tell her tomorrow."

"Jack, I worked with her all night, she can't do single-digit addition problems. There are these couple hundred words she's supposed to know, and she knows maybe two of them. And you should have heard her read."

"Look, tomorrow is Saturday, and I have it off. I'll work with her all day."

"You promised you were going to take the kids to the batting cages, remember? Janet was going to take Hannah."

"Yeah, well, this is more important."

"She's trying her best, and I don't want to feel that she's being punished."

"Ok, but after the batting cage…" Jack says.

Sam nods her head.

**Three Days Later**

"Mommy, teacher said to give this to you," Emma says when Sam comes home not long before her children's bedtime.

"She wouldn't let me look at it," Jack say curiously.

Sam opens the envelope to reveal a brand new set of sight word flash cards, carefully cut by the teacher just for her forgetful daughter. She's sorry for all the things she thought about the teacher before. She wasn't unhelpful, so much as a bit stressed and overworked.

**Two Weeks Later**

Shelby's eyes open to see a flower on the nightstand. She knows it wasn't there when she fell asleep last night.

"I made you breakfast in bed," Teal'c says, pushing the door open and laying a tray on her lap with toast and coffee on it.

"This is another one of those things you're misunderstanding. This is traditionally done either by kids on mother's day or… it's romantic."

"Indeed?" Teal'c says with a raise of an eyebrow.

Shelby turns her head toward the rose.

"Is the flower correct?"

"Correct for what?" Shelby asks.

Teal'c's face gives away more than she meant to.

The doorbell rings, and Shelby jumps out of bed before Teal'c places the board on her knees. She figures she saved by the bell.

"Mom?" she asks in surprise when she opens the door. She has changed her mind about being saved by the bell now.

"I just need you to watch the kids for a minute," her mom says frantically.

"Is this minute going to be like the week-long minute you spent in Las Vegas when I was ten?"

"This isn't like that, I just need you to watch them while I go to a job interview."

"You're high, mom, you're not going to a job interview."

"I'm clean. I haven't been on drugs for years, and you know that!" her mom yells.

"Is there a problem?" Teal'c asks, walking up behind her.

"You're new boyfriend is black?" Shelby's mother says.

"He's not my boyfriend, we're roommates."

"Whatever, just watch the kids," Shelby's mom insists, walking away.

"Kin of Shelby, do you like toast for breakfast? My cooking skills are somewhat rudimentary," Teal'c says.

"They eat whatever," Shelby says, shutting the door. "Teal'c, these are my sisters Tammy and Becky Lynn."

"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance," Teal'c says, offering them a bow.

"Shelby, Mommy is sick again," the eight year old, Tammy, says.

"Yeah, well, Mommy chooses to be sick. She didn't bring you any spare clothes, and..." Shelby sniffs, "When is the last time your clothes were cleaned?"

"The washing machine is broken," Becky Lyn, a five year old, says.

"Of course it is," Shelby says sarcastically. "Once you guys eat the toast, we're going to bathe you, and wash your clothes, and we'll buy you new clothing, and then we'll get you to school."

"Shelby, you have classes today, don't you?"

"Not for two hours," she says.

"Today is my day off. Give me the sizes, and I will purchase the clothing. I will return in time to finish child care."

"I can do this, Teal'c."

"You can't be late. Take care of them until I return, and I will get them to their school."

"They're not your sisters."

"No, but they're yours."


	42. Part 4 Chapter 5

"Thanks Teal'c, I'm going to run," Shelby says the second that he walks through the door.

"This dress is pretty," Tammy says, taking it out of the bag, "Mommy says dresses are too fancy for me."

"Your mother is wrong, nothing is too fancy for you," Teal'c informs the child, "Now take your clothing into the bathroom and put it on." In that phrase, he edited himself in order to use small words, like he used to when his son was younger.

Tammy grins, and heads to the bathroom, pulling her sister after herself. Teal'c begins taking things out of the bags and packing backpacks for the young girls. He isn't sure if their mother just didn't bring their school supplies or if they don't have any. So he got them some in case. Worst case, he just wasted thirty dollars.

Then Becky Lynn comes out of the bedroom, and sees the crayons that he's putting in her backpack. "Who are they for?" she asks in awe.

"I was thinking of finding some little girls to give them too," he teases in the easy way he's seen Jack and Jacob do with children of this size. They are Earth children, and he needs to take care of them in an Earth way.

"I'm a little girl," Becky Lynn proclaims with shining eyes.

"Well, then, one of these is for you," Teal'c says, handing her the smaller cartoon character backpack.

"You got us each the big box of crayons," Tammy says.

"Indeed."

"We've never had the big box before," Becky Lynn says softly.

"We've always had to share," Tammy adds.

And Teal'c heart swells with the incredible urge to buy these little girls everything they've ever wanted.

"Your educational institutions have already begun dispensing knowledge," he says, forgetting to dumb down the language, because he's so distracted by this thought.

"What?" Becky Lynn asks.

"He means we're late for school," her nine-year-old sister translates.

Teal'c smiles and nods at the older girl. So not only is she as cute as a button, she's smart, too, he muses to himself.

He never liked children, in theory. That's why he was thirty years into his marriage before his son accidentally arrived on the scene. He been angry when he found out he was going to be a father. Why would he create another slave generation? Why should he bolster the numbers of the army?

But then he'd seen Ry'ac, and he'd understand. Parenthood, childhood, the meaning of life, all in one tiny smile of a newborn.

It wasn't logical, and he was ok with that.

These kids, they were making him feel all of that again. And they weren't even his kin.

"Kin of Shelby, have you eaten?"

The little girls nod their heads.

"Prepare yourselves for departure."

-0-0-0-

"I'm sorry I'm late. I need ta get my sisters into bed," Shelby says as she rushes into the apartment later that night.

"They are already in bed," Teal'c says.

"Really? It's usually impossible to get them to shut their eyes."

"I gave them a bath, then I read them soothing stories. Is that not the Earth way of putting small children to bed? It is the method that the O'Neill taught me to employ when I have babysat for their children in the past."

"That's great, but where did you get the book?"

"I purchased it this morning," he says.

"Did they eat?"

"They enjoyed fish sticks. Does this food actually contain fish and sticks?"

"Well, hopefully it contains fish, the stick part comes from the shape. I wish I was here to make sure that they did their homework."

"Their homework is complete. I required Becky Lynn to read her story twice, because she made significant errors in the first reading. Tammy made one error on her math, and I instructed her to fix it."

"Wow, I can usually barely get them to do their homework, much less do it twice. You're really good with them."

"I enjoyed being around your kin," he replies.

"Great," Shelby says, but she looks away from them.

"Shelby you shouldn't feel guilty about this."

"Why? Just because a stranger is better with my sisters than I am? Why would that make me feel guilty?" she says sarcastically.

"Shelby, you spend a significant amount of time mothering these children when you were growing up, did you not?" he asks.

"They're my half-sisters, you know; I was a teenager by the time that Tammy entered the picture. My mom was even less responsible when they came around than when I was born. I changed their diapers, and feed them, and rocked them to sleep."

"You were too young for such weighty responsibility."

"You do what you have to do," Shelby says dismissively.

"You no longer have to shoulder that responsibility."

"They still need help," Shelby says looking in his eyes.

"That is what I am here for," Teal'c informs her.

-0-0-0-

"How did the homework go?" Sam asks coming into the house after work.

Emma has a look of cold determination on her face, an arms crossed across her chest, "No," she says.

Sam glances at Jack.

"We were doing pretty good, and then she gave up on me," Jack says.

"You're lying, dad, I'm too stupid for math."

Sam sits down across from the girl at the table. "Do you know who Einstein was?" she asks.

"He's the guy who stuck is finger in a light socket and discovered electricity, right?"

Sam is proud of herself for not laughing, "Not exactly sweetie. Another guy discovered electricity with a kite. But Einstein was one of the smartest people ever. He explained how light and energy interact together. A lot of the calculations that I do in a day stem from the ones that he came up with."

"How exactly do you think telling me about a really smart person is going to make me feel any better?" her daughter sneers.

"He had trouble when he was in school. So much trouble that they kicked him out of the school that he went to, and his parents had to find him another one. He couldn't do math. But when he grew up he invented a whole new kind of math."

Emma just looks at her mother.

"What I'm trying to tell you is that we just have to find a new way to show you how to do the stuff you've been working on. You can get it. I know you can get it. We just have to figure out how your brain works."

"How come some people don't have to work hard? How come some people just get it?" Emma asks glancing over at her brother, who has already finished his homework and is drawing on the floor of the living room.

"Because some people aren't as lucky as you, goose, some people don't get to find out what they are made off. What are we working on?"

"Adding," Emma says.

"Well, that's great you're good at adding," Sam says with a smile.

"I am not."

"You're great at counting, and adding is just counting," Sam says.

**A Day Later**

"Daniel Jackson, you spent your formative years in the care of your country's government, did you not?" Teal'c says walking into her lab.

"Yeah, between eight and eighteen. Is this about Shelby's little sisters?"

Teal'c nods his head, "Did you receive the material and emotional support you required while in the care of foster?"

"Yeah, I guess. I mean, they didn't starve me or anything. Didn't their mother come back for them?"

"I do not believe their mother provides them with the material goods they require to be successful at their educational institution, or remain clean. Also I do not think that she provides them with enough affection."

"You don't think their mother loves them enough? Yeah, the state is not going to take them away because of that. You know, research shows that the more loving adults a kid has in their life, the better they do. You can be there for those little girls."

**One Week Later**

"Teal'c what does this mean?" Shelby asks, bringing yet another fresh flower out of her bedroom and holding it up to him.

He looks at her, "I am not well versed in how to execute a romantic endeavor on your world. In my world, all we do is ask someone to become our spouse."

"Are you like, seriously thinking about proposing to me?" Shelby asks in a mystified tone.

"I know that that is the inappropriate romantic move in this culture. That is why I started by offering you a flower."

"You could just ask me to date," Shelby says.

Teal'c is silent.

"Unless you don't want to," Shelby says, fidgeting with her nervousness.

"I do want to, I am just uncertain about the correct way to proceed," Teal'c says.

"Good thing you have a yoda," Shelby says with a grin.

**A Week Later**

It's less than a second between when Janet wakes up and when she's bent over the toilet losing the dinner that Daniel cooked for her a couple of hours ago.

Before her miscarriage, she took a pregnancy test as soon as she could. After… she just didn't want to know. You take an early test, and there is a 30% chance the baby would die. She couldn't deal with that again. She knows that if she waits for a missed period, waits for her the nausea, her odds are up to 15%. Half the chance of having a broken heart.

Her period should have started yesterday, and it hasn't, and now she's throwing up in the middle of the night. She takes the test.

Positive. But she's not going to tell Daniel yet. She might be able to survive a 15% chance of losing a baby, but she knows that Daniel can't survive odds like that. She wants to protect him, and guard his heart from every possible misfortune. But she knows there is no such thing as a 100% guarantee.

She's going to wait until she hears the heartbeat. By then, there will be a 95% chance that she'll bring a healthy baby into the world. Daniel can handle odds like that.


	43. Part 4 Chapter 6

**Two Weeks Later**

Shelby knows the pattern by now. The way they are going to tilt their heads. The places of her body that Teal'c is going to run his hands over, and the way her body is going to turn to goose flesh under his touch. Shelby knows how long they will kiss before his tongue will tease his way into her mouth.

It's comfortable, and still exhilarating.

And then suddenly, it is neither.

Teal'c has eases her down on the couch, and is hovering over her. Shelby pushes a hand against his chest. Just a tiny bit, she could push as hard as she could, and she couldn't fight him off. But the tiniest touch makes him pull away.

He doesn't say anything, but just looks at her with compassion, and hopes that she will explain herself.

"We can't do this," Shelby says after a few seconds.

"I would not have embarked on a romantic encounter with you if it was not possible for the members of our two species to mate."

"Don't call it mating, and… I don't mean that we can't physically do this."

"Refusing to have romantic relationships with other species is similar to your people's recent historical reluctance to intermarry between races."

"Actually, having sex with other species is called bestiality, but if Jaffa and humans can create offspring, then they really aren't different species," Shelby says, "But I wasn't talking physically."

"Are you reluctant to engage in coatis with me, because we come from different cultures?"

"Seriously, Teal'c this is what euphamisms were invented for. And we're not going to be sleeping together because we aren't married."

"I was not attempting to sleep with you. I would not have done that without first asking your permission. I agree to your terms to wait until matrimony."

Shelby closes her eyes, "Teal'c, this doesn't mean that you and I are getting married. It's… way too early for us to know if we are ever going to get married."

Teal'c nods his head.

"We can still kiss," Shelby says cheerfully.

"Can we kiss horizontally?" Teal'c asks, leaning toward her.

Shelby answers him by pulling his body toward herself.

**A Week Later**

"Hey, Teal'c you came from work late," Shelby says when he enters their apartment late at night.

"I was not at work."

"Ok, where were you?"

"Tammy has a science test tomorrow."

"Tammy, as in my sister, Tammy?"

"Indeed."

"Dude, you went over to my house to help my little sister study for a test? Have you been going over there all the time?"

He nods his head. A nod so small that almost no one can see it.

"Why?"

"Your children are in need of additional attention from adults."

"But why are you the one that is giving it to them?"

"You took care of them for enough years, Shelby."

She doesn't look at him. She looks everywhere but his face.

"It's my turn, Shelby."

"They're my sisters, you shouldn't have a turn at all," Shelby protests.

"I like spending time with them."

"Really?" Shelby asks.

"Really."

**Two Weeks Later**

Janet stands at Daniel's door.

"Are you here for lunch or 'lunch', 'cause I haven't had the apartment since we got married, and I'm not sure sneaking off to the bed that we use acrobatically every single night is going to be as exciting."

"I just came from a doctor's appointment," she says.

He stands, "What's wrong?"

She rushes over to his side, "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. I'm fine, and so is our baby."

"You're pregnant," he says with a grin.

"Yep, and here is the part you're not going to like. I've known for a couple of weeks."

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks, putting a hand on her stomach.

"I told you too early last time. If I lost this kid, I wanted you never to have known about it."

"How pregnant are you?" he asks.

"Eight weeks."

"And it's ok?"

"I heard its heartbeat today. I snagged you some pictures," she says, handing him an ultrasound.

Tears run down his face.

"You're mad at me?" Janet asks, confused by the tears.

He shakes his head. He takes the sonogram, and puts it over her stomach, causing them both to laugh.

**The Next Day**

Janet wakes up sitting on the coach with blankets wrapped around her and the TV off. She'd like to blame her overprotective husband, but he's off-world, so this must have been her daughter.

She smiles to herself, and gets up to go to bed.

"Mom?" Cassie says when Janet hits the squeaky stair one from the top.

"Something wrong, babe?" Janet says, peeping into her daughter's room.

"You feel asleep again."

"Yeah, I've been tired lately," Janet says.

"You've been sick for a long time," Cassie says. Her mother looks into her eyes, and sees the terrified kid that lost two parents not long ago

"Honey, I'm fine. I'm having a baby."

Relief flows over Cassie's face. "I really get to be a sister."

"Yeah."

Cassie squeals just like she did when she found out that her parents were getting married.

**Two Days Later**

"Hey, Janet, did SG-1 get back yet? Jack told me he was going to be home hours ago," Sam asks, walking into the infirmary.

Janet closes her eyes, "My husband is a coward. He said he was going to tell you."

"What's wrong?" Sam's stomach sinks.

"There was a meteor shower; Jack didn't make it through the gate."

"He's dead?" Sam asks, her knees starting to collapse.

"No, honey," Janet says, rushing to give her support by the shoulder, "He's just stranded."

"Well, I need to get to the gate room. We have to go get him."

"We've dialed the address a bunch of times, Sam, they can't make a lock."

"I'll find a way," she says, pushing past her friend.

**The Next Day**

Daniel brings a plate of dry toast into his bedroom.

"Sweet thought, babe, but smell," Janet says, waving it away.

He gets rid of the toast, and then comes to sit next to her, "I'm going to call work and tell them that you are not coming in."

"I swear I'm getting up. Just give me an hour."

"You're growing a person, take the day."

She nods.

"I'm sorry you're so sick. I should have had the kid, like Jack. Then you wouldn't have to be sick."

"Honey, I _want_ to have your baby. I _want_ to carry it within me. And the very hormones that are making me so sick are the ones that show that the baby is doing fine. Go to work, I'm fine."

He bends over and gives his wife a kiss before he walks out of the room.

**Six Days Later**

"Sammy," Jacob says gently, standing at the door of his daughter's office.

"Who vouched you onto base?" Sam asks without looking up at her father.

"George, he's just about as worried about you as I am."

"Who has the kids?"

"I'm surprised you would care about that," her father says with sarcasm.

"They are my children, dad, of course I care about them."

"Right, just not enough to actually spend any time with them," Jacob says.

"I'm trying to get their father back."

"Honey, your kids are already missing a father, they don't need to be missing a mother as well."

"They will get their mother back as soon as I rescue Jack."

"They need you now, babe," he says softly, "And you need to sleep."

"So what? I'm just supposed to go home, and spend a couple hours with my kids and sleep. That would halve the hours I spend working on Jack, and double the amount of time it would take to get him home. He can't be gone for that long."

"Sammy, I know that you're scared. You were a single mom for a long time, and you don't want to have to do it again. But you can. I mean, you did. Of course, then it was only one instead of three. But you're a good mother, Sam."

She turns to her father with a look of confusion on her face, "You think I'm copping out of being a parent? Seriously?"

He realizes how wrong he is in a flash. "I'm sorry, Sammy."

"I'll take the kids to the park on Saturday. Until then, you have to let me work."

"Ok," her father says. He is almost out of the room before he turns back to his daughter, and says, "Bring him home, Sweetie."

**Two Weeks Later**

Jacob wakes up in the middle of the night, and does his rounds on his grandchildren. Hannah is laying in her crib with her butt far in the air. Emma's room is empty, but that doesn't worry Jacob. He walks into his grandson's room, and he sees both Ty an Emma in one bed. There is a giant stuffed elephant between the two of them, and they each have an arm wrapped around it.

He's about to head to bed when he hears Emma's tiny voice. "Grandpa."

"What do you need, sweetie?"

"They're not coming back, are they?"

"They are," Jacob says with more certainty than he feels. He knows that his son-in-law is abandoned on another planet, and may never come back. He also knows that his daughter might never accept that fact.

"If they don't come back?" Emma asks, only half a question, because that is all she can manage.

"They're going to come back. But if anything happened with them, I would take care of you. We signed papers and everything."

"My Daddy signed papers to give me to Jack and Sam."

"Yes, Emma, somebody will always be there to take care of you."

"Is it bad that sometimes I wish it was it was the same someone all the time?"

"No, little sprout, that isn't bad at all. I wish your first Daddy was still here. Jack and Sam are coming home, too."


	44. Part 4 Chapter 7

**A Week Later**

"Hey, honey," Shelby says easily as she walks into the room.

Teal'c panics and guilty tries to turn the TV off.

Shelby glares at him suspiciously, and turns on the television, fully expecting to see a naked women on it. Instead she sees a scene from a really cheesy romantic comedy. "You're watching a chic flick?"

"There are no chickens in this film."

"No, but it's a romantic comedy. You know, it's the kind of show that usually only girls watch."

"I have been watching films that how a variety of romantic situations."

"Why exactly?" Shelby asks with a raise of her eyebrow.

"I am studying the methods of wooing that are common in your culture."

She grins at him, and sits down on the edge of the couch near his knees, "You've got me, babe. You don't need to woo me."

"I don't have you, and I'm going to woo you long after I do," he says, smiling at her.

A furrow forms between Shelby's eyebrows. "I feel really sad that you don't think you have me."

He puts his palms against hers, and they flex their fingers out.

"I'm not sure what this means," Shelby tells him.

He just smiles at her.

**Two Days Later**

Shelby stands in the doorway of Teal'c's room, and looks in on him.

"So you seriously never sleep?"

"It seems that you don't, either," he says, opening one eye to look at her.

She giggles, "I just can't sleep tonight. Well, sometimes. So you just meditate all night or whatever?"

"I require only a few hours of meditation a night."

"So what do you do the rest of the night?"

He opens her eyes, and smiles at her. "It is peaceful at night. The whole of your world is asleep. It is when I learn about your world."

"And how do you learn about my world?"

"Once I discovered the television is not an accurate portrayal of the happenings of your world, mostly through books I obtain through the library."

"You read a lot of sociology," Shelby comments, having noticed the books that were laying around the apartment.

"If you are going to study humans of Earth that would be the wisest area to study."

"Will you teach me to meditate?"

Teal'c looks at her in surprise.

"I mean humans can do that, right? We are capable, right?" Shelby asks.

"Indeed," Teal'c replies, "Why would you want to learn this skill?"

"I don't know," Shelby shrugs, "You came to live in my country. You are doing all of these things to learn about my culture, to adjust to my culture, and I haven't done anything to learn about your culture."

He nods his head toward his legs, and she takes the hint by folding her legs under herself. "You focus on the light of the candle. You have to let put everything out of your mind. When other things start to come back into your mind, you must push them back out of your mind. Only focus on the flickering of the candle."

She closes her eyes, and tries to do what he asked her too. But there are a lot of thoughts swarming into her mind. The smell of the candles, and the smell of Teal'c, different from human smell, and gloriously manly. She can feel his body, even though they aren't touching, even though her eyes are closed. She feels like she can feel his entire soul, and it is glorious.

She opens his eyes, and looks at him. He's staring at her with awe in his face. "Did you feel that too?" she whispers, unwilling to ruin the sanctity of the moment, but needing to know the answer desperately.

"You're supposed to be focusing on the candle," he says with what passes for a self-satisfied smirk, although he doesn't actually use any of his facial muscles to make it.

"You're a lot more interesting than the candle," she says.

"That is the point. During Kal-no-rem, you must focus on a simple thing. In truth, the candle is almost too complex to begin with."

"Ok, I'll try again," Shelby says with a giggle.

This time her mind is completely focused on the task before her. But Teal'c does not try to go back to meditation. He just looks at the women before him. He admires the way that her hair has waves, only after she's been sleeping on it all night. He analyses the reasons why this strand choose to fall over a shoulder while another goes the other way.

He observes the way he can see the blue of her veins through her skin at her wrists and her elbow.

He notices the way she breathes, not like you should when you Kal-no-rem, but correcting it now when she's so deep into meditation would be more of a distraction than its worth.

And he knows that he loves this women a way that he's never loved before. The way that people loved in stories. The kind of love that had delayed his marriage until three decades had passed over him. He'd give up hoping that this was ever going to happen.

"I can feel you looking at me," Shelby says, peeping one eye open to look at him.

"You're much more interesting than a candle," he says, quoting her words back to him.

**Two Days Later**

Daniel has just come back from a two-day mission. It's four in the afternoon, and Cassie is working on her homework.

"Hey, kid," he says kissing her forehead, "Where is your mother?"

"She's at the hospital," Cassie says casually.

"What?" Daniel asks panicking, "We have to go right now."

"Relax, she left me a message at school and said she couldn't keep anything down. She just went in for an IV."

"No, it has to be something else. She would never have left you alone."

"She knew you were coming home today. And if you weren't home in a half hour I was supposed to call Sam. I can look after myself for a couple of hours," Cassie says with a roll of her eye.

"Well, pack up the homework, because we're going into the hospital."

"She told me not to let you do that. She'll be home in a couple of hours. It's just morning sickness, dad."

Daniel closes his eyes, knowing that Janet had gone through a lot of effort to ensure that their daughter didn't worry. He doesn't want to undo all of that now. There is no way he can go to the hospital and keep Cassie from worrying. So he goes over to the stove and starts to make her food.

-0-0-0-

"Hey, Daniel," Janet's voice on the phone fills him with an incredible amount of relief.

"Hey, I wanted to come see you, I swear. I just didn't know how to do it without terrifying the kid."

"Daniel, calm down, you did exactly what I wanted you to do. I just need you to come pick me up now."

"You're ok?"

"I'm totally ok, I just needed an IV, because I haven't been able to keep anything down for almost two days."

"See, that doesn't exactly sound like nothing to me," Daniel says cautiously.

"Daniel, I'm a doctor, I have this covered. It is just Hyperemesis gravidarum. It happens to a lot of women."

"You're in the hospital, Janet."

"Come pick me up, babe, I promise I'm fine. And the kid doesn't need a babysitter, she's going to be fine for an hour."

**The Next Day**

Shelby knew that this was not the day to take an extra shift. Teal'c called her two times during the day to remind her about their dinner date.

So she isn't surprised when the table is alight with the thousands of candles that he loves so much. But he is surprised by the way he stands up when she enters the room, staring at her. It's a look she's never seen before. There is something in it of the look that people give the sunrise, and something in it that they give a deity, and the whole thing makes her flush.

"Shelby, I want to offer you this token," he says, holding out a ring.

"That's not a token, man," she says.

"It represents my desire to enter into matrimony with you."

"There is nothing token about that."

Teal'c smile at her. A real human smile, and it makes her stomach jump in excitement.

"You want to be with me forever?" she asks.

"I want to join my life, my soul, my body to yours," Teal'c says.

Sheby's face flushes at the last word.

"So you accept?" Teal'c asks holding the ring out to her.

"Yes," Shelby says putting it on her hand before leaning forward, and gently kissing him.

He pulls her into a deeper kiss.

"I don't want kids, is that a deal breaker?" Shelby asks.

"I have a child."

"Right, but he doesn't live with you."

"I see him periodically. I want him to be a part of my life when I am."

Shelby nods her head. "I would be ok with that."

"Why do you not want to produce offspring? I believe that your genes are superior to many of those of your species."

Shelby smiles, "I appreciate that, but I don't necessarily agree. My family is screwed up, like really screwed up. There is mental illness, and cycles of abuse, and I'm not brining another kid into that. It ends with me."

"Nurturing has more effect on children than genetics. I believe you would be a very good mother."

"I don't want to risk it," Shelby says softly.

He nods his head gravely.

"But I feel bad, I mean… maybe you want to have kids?"

"I already have a child. I am fine with your decision."

"We're getting married," she says, swaying her hips as she steps even closer to him.

"Indeed," he says, running his hand through her hair, which is already starting to curl for the night. He loves this woman, and he knows that his future is bright.


	45. Part 4 Chapter 8

**One Week Later**

"Shelby, it has come to my attention that I have botched the engagement ceremony," he informs her as she leaves the college class.

"No, actually I think you did a very good job of it," she says, skipping a tiny bit as she runs up to give him a quick kiss on his cheek.

"I failed to ask your father for your hand in marriage. I understand that the man who lives with your mother is not your father. Should I ask your current or biological father for permission to proceed with our upcoming nuptials?"

"You're asking if you should ask the guy who abandoned me or the guy who hit me for permission to marry me?"

"Indeed."

"Neither Teal'c, you just ask me to marry you, because I don't belong to anymore. It's an old tradition, and it certainly doesn't work with the jerks in my life."

"I am under the impression that it is a tradition which endears yourself to the family."

"They're going to say no."

"My information suggests that they always assent to the marriage."

"Yeah, well that is not going to happen here," Shelby says, not meeting Teal'c's eyes.

"If there is something about me that they would find objectionable, I will endeavor to change it."

"You're going to change your skin color?" Shelby asks.

Teal'c looks at her.

"You probably don't understand this. Maybe you can't even understand it, because you're not from Earth. But in America…"

"Your country is not the only one to ever treat people unfairly based on things they could not help."

"I'm sorry," Shelby said.

He looks at her with a question in his face, "Do you feel as your family does?"

"What? Of course not! Just because my family is a racist, doesn't mean that I am."

"Then why would you apologize?"

"It's just what you would do. When someone in your family hurt someone you love you apologize."

"If my race will provide you with embarrassment, we could terminate the relationship."

"Not a chance, man."

"I would expect further contact with your family as the nuptials approach."

"No way, I swore I was never going back there."

He stops, and Shelby pauses her steps to stay near him. He touches his arms, the fingers spraying over the long vanished bruise. "I would not allow them to hurt you again."

-0-0-0-

"Jack, look what Emma gave me today," Sam says, holding up a card for her husband alone in their bedroom that night.

"Best Mommy ever," he reads, "Sounds like it fits you pretty well," he smiles.

"I'm not her mother."

"Of course you are. You're her mother. I'm her father. We're a family. She deserves this to feel real, for everyone."

"I know, that, but my point is that she has a mother out there somewhere."

"A mother who doesn't want her."

"A mother who never got rid of her parental right, which is why we're her guardians and not her adopted parents."

"Right, and if we go looking for this imaginary mother, we might lose our daughter," Jack says.

Sam looks away.

"You don't even care, do you?" Jack accuses. "Maybe you even want her gone."

She shakes her head "Jack, when your father left it was a good thing, a blessing. You don't get death… what it's like. When a good person leaves your life… it's different. I can't imagine what it would be like to have someone you love just walk away from you."

"She doesn't remember her mother."

"She knows that her mother left her," Sam insists.

"Samantha, we are not even going to discuss this. We are not going to give our child away to a stranger who didn't want her," Jack says, stomping out of the room.

**A Week Later**

Teal'c reaches across the table to squeeze Shelby's hand. She gives him a smile. At first he didn't understand these strange Earth things. They could mean so many things that they were completely meaningless. People smiled when they were happy, and when they were sad, and when something was funny, and when they were nervous and for a million other reasons.

But by learning to read Shelby, he had learned to read humanity. He knew this little lazy smile, accompanied by a half circle eyes facing down, was the kind of smile people made when they were trying to lie about their feelings until they themselves believe it.

He gives her a smile, and hopes it says all the thing the meant to say. He hopes it says he's sorry. He hopes it says he's scared too, and most of all he hope it says that everything is going to be all right.

"Shel," Shelby's mother says approaching. Shelby's mother holds out her hands, obviously expecting a hug, but Shelby doesn't move out of the seat.

"Look, Teal'c wanted to spend some time with you before the wedding. That's what we're here for," Shelby says.

"I thought this is what I was doing."

Teal'c stands up, and extends his arms to her. She baulks a little. She had decided to be nice. She had decided that she wasn't a racist, that she didn't care that her daughter was marrying a black man.

But she had never touched a black man before, and the involuntary flinch speaks more than words.

A year ago, Teal'c would have missed it. Little motions didn't matter. If you were close enough to see a flinch like that, your opponent could have already killed you. But in cities, where most battles are social, you had no notice smaller things.

He sits down and tries to understand racism. It should make more sense to a person who has worked around slaves his whole life. But he doesn't understand how skin color still matters when slavery was abolished before any of them was born.

Shelby's mother, Mary Done, sits down and fidgets with the silverware. "I'm sorry your father couldn't be here."

"I assume you're talking about Scott, and not the coke addict who actually contributed to my genes," Shelby says bitterly.

"Right, well, he's watching the kids, so he couldn't be here."

"I didn't want him here," Shelby says angrily.

"I don't know why I even came iffin you don't want to see me," Shelby's mom says, standing to leave.

Teal'c's voice stops her, "We cannot always be the parents that we wish we were."

Mary sits back down, and looks at him.

"When my son was small, I was often on missions as a warrior."

"You have a kid?" Mary asks, acting like a truly worried mother for a bit.

"He will not reside with us."

"Where is your kid?" Mary asks with the same kind of face that her daughter wore, because of the same kind of baggage.

"My child is with his mother."

"But you're not there for him," Irene said.

"Teal'c's son is too far away. He is as involved in his son's life as he can be."

"Like your dad claimed to be as involved in your life as he could be?"

"He was," Shelby says, "You wouldn't let him see me."

"Because he was bad for you!"

"And you were so great! I've taken care of you since I was a little girl! I have taken care of my siblings since I was born. My dad might not have done anything for me, but at least he didn't do anything to hurt me!"

"I didn't come here to argue about the past. I came here to get to know the man who will define your future."

"I do not make decisions on behalf of Shelby," Teal'c says stoically.

"No, no one can do that. I couldn't even do that when she was a little girl. But the decisions that the two of you make together are different than the decisions that she would have made if she was on her own. So this decision… it matters more than all of the decisions."

Teal'c leans back in the both, one of the few social cues that has become natural to him since he first went out into the world and started learning body language by rote.

"So, who are you?"

"I am Teal'c of Chulak."

"Will she be taking your last name?" Irene asks innocently.

Shelby snort, "Mom, Chulak isn't a last name."

"A title?" Mary says hoping that maybe her daughter has tripped onto royalty.

"A place, Chulak is a… country," Shelby substitutes for the word 'planet.'

"It is, in fact, a city," Teal'c corrects.

"Really?" Shelby asks.

"The SGC made an error in listing Chulak on its records."

"And you never bothered to correct them?" Shelby asks in shock.

"At the time that the error was made, I confined by your country."

"Wait a second…you were in jail?" Mary asks.

"No, he was a political refugee, mom, he didn't do anything wrong," Shelby says.

"I have in fact done many things wrong," Teal'c corrects, suddenly panicking that Shelby might not understand the depth of his past.

"I know you did bad things before. But you were following orders. And you don't do those things anymore."

"I still follow orders," Teal'c says.

"Right, but Jack's orders. I mean he doesn't tell you to do… horrible things."

"He is a better leader than Apophis, but does not mean I do not do horrible things. And having orders does not absolve you of moral obligation."

Shelby looks at him, and smiles. And he realizes that she doesn't understand the depth of what she did. She doesn't understand guilt.

He hopes she never will.

But still, there is something missing between them. There will always be a part of him, a large part of him, the majority of him, that she would never understand.

Then he looks at the way Shelby looks at her mother, and he realizes that there is a part of her, the part which was neglected and abused, which was abandoned, and grew up too fast, and that was a part of her which he would never understand.


	46. End of Part 4

**One Month Later**

"Sam told me you told your team about Nick," Janet says softly to her husband as she catches his arm before going into the briefing room.

"Yeah, that's what this meeting is all about," Daniel says.

"Are you sure that you're ok with this? With them knowing? It seemed pretty secretive when you told me."

"Janet, Nick might have been right. He might not even be crazy. And he's been in that mental hospital… for so long. It was horrible for me, and it was less than a week. I don't know what I would have done."

She touches his arm comfortingly, "Are you going to be alright talking about him in there?"

"I have to do this," he says.

"No, you don't. If you don't want to talk about personal family issues in front of your colleges you don't have to. Give me your notes, and I'll give you the reader's digest version."

"I love that you're offering to do that for me, but I am fine," he says smiling a flirt in her direction.

Daniel walk confidently into the briefing and turns on his power point. His wife sits down at the table, and turn the chair pulling it even closer to him.

Jack and Teal'c walk in and sit down. Jack's telling a story about Hannah trying to blow bubbles. Apparently she inhaled enough soap she burped a bubble.

The rest of the people in the meeting come in, and Daniel starts his PowerPoint slides, saying, "I could name at least a dozen different crystal skulls from various parts of the world, but the skull that Nick discovered in Belize was unique."

"Nick?" Jack asks pointedly.

Janet turns, and gives him a glare. Her husband can call his estranged grandfather whatever he wants to.

"Uh, yeah, the, uh… the great explorer, the not-so-great grandfather Nicholas Ballard. He preferred being called Nick even when I was a kid. It was, uh…" He can tell that his overprotective wife is about to save him, so he switches quickly to another a topic, "Anyway, the point is that no-one can explain how the skull that Nick discovered was carved from a single piece of crystal, against the grain, given the technology of the day. He claimed that it possessed a certain… power."

General Hammond asks, "What kind of power?"

"That if one were to look into the eyes of the skull, one would be teleported to see… aliens," Daniel says, looking down and refusing to make eye contact with anyone.

"Your grandfather saw these aliens?" Teal'c asks with his eyebrow raised.

"So he insisted to the entire academic community," Daniel says, sighing.

"I take it it wasn't well received," Tela'c says.

"As you might imagine, no. Um, he tried for years under controlled conditions to make the skull teleport him again to where the aliens lived, but he… never could."

"Doesn't mean he wasn't right," Jack says.

"I know, I should have known as soon as I started working at the Stargate there is some truth to what he is saying."

-0-0-0-

Janet is working in the infirmary when most of SG-1 comes back into the room. "Did you lose my husband?" she jokes.

All of SG-1, even the previously unemotional Teal'c, look stricken.

"What happened to him?"

"He disappeared," Jack says.

"What are you doing here? Go look for him!" she shouts.

"I don't mean that I don't know where he is Janet, I mean that I was looking right at him, and he disappeared."

"People don't disappear," Janet says.

"And the pyramids aren't landing pads for alien space crafts, because that would be ridiculous," Jack retorts.

Tears spring to Janet's eyes, and she isn't sure if it's because she's seven months pregnant, or if she would have been crying anyway.

"We're going to get him back," Jack says moving closer.

"Yes we are, what was he doing when he went missing?" It's not the time for crying, it's the time for saving her husband.

-0-0-0-

Janet took a lot of biology during her education. She also took a fair amount of chemistry. She didn't take a whole lot of physics. Now this means that she can't do much to help her husband come back from his missing status.

She hands Sam a glass of water. At least she can help the person who is getting her husband back not collapse from dehydration. This is something she's qualified to do.

"Thank you," Sam says, taking a sip.

Suddenly Janet feels an incredible chill goes through her body. "Did anyone else feel that?" she asks the room.

"What?" Sam asks.

"I just got a chill." Janet mentally runs through all the medical reasons for a chill. Probably a virus, of course, nothing to worry about.

Then she has the undeniable feeling of arms wrapped around her body. She knows that there is no-one there, it isn't real enough to be mistaken for reality. But it is much too real to be mistaken for nothing at all.

She thinks she knows what it is, but she really hopes she's wrong. Because if she's not wrong… then her husband must be dead. You can't be a ghost until you are dead.

-0-0-0-

"I can't believe I'm gonna suggest this, but what about Daniel's grandfather?" Sam asks Janet as the two sit in their office after a failed run with the UTV.

"I don't think that is an option," Janet says hoping that her friend will drop the idea.

"Well, he claimed that the skull teleported him somewhere. He may be the only person who actually knows where Daniel is," Sam defends her idea.

"I'm not so sure, Major. Daniel didn't exactly share with you guys where his Grandfather lives right now. He's in a mental hospital. Apparently his failure to prove the crystal skull was more than just a curiosity caused a severe mental breakdown from which he's never been able to fully recover. Nick checked himself in."

"Why wouldn't Daniel have told us that?" Sam asks.

"He didn't even tell me until the thing with Marchello's worms last year. There was a time when Daniel actually believed that he himself had a mental illness. Daniel used to visit him all the time. But they had a big fight when he wrote the paper about the pyramids and writing being older than everyone else thought it was. Daniel doesn't really want to talk about him, but when this all started to happen I called up Nick's psychiatric hospital. Apparently, Nick still talks about him all the time. The doctor I spoke to says any friends of Dr Jackson's are welcome."

"We don't have much else to go on. Will you be ok if I ask General Hammond for permission to head out there?"

Janet gives her a nod.

-0-0-0-

Janet stands in the waiting room of the mental hospital where her husband's only family resides. She remembers mental hospitals from her psychiatric residency. She hated it. Hated the way it was so still and silent and so hopeless.

A nurse finally comes out and says, "Sorry for the wait. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"You may take us to Nicholas Ballard immediately," Teal'c says quickly. The time that he spent with Shelby had softened him out a great deal, but he was still direct to the point of crassness.

The nurses is obviously offended, and Jack smoothes it over by saying, "He's just a little anxious to see old Nick."

"Oh, are you close?" the nurse asks. Janet knows that the nurse really doesn't expect them to be close to him. If she's worked there long she must know that they haven't visited him before. And it's not like many people come to visit people in mental hospitals. Prisons, yes; hospitals, yes; the nut house? Not so much. Insanity is just about the loneliest thing you can have.

Jack answers her question in the affirmative at the same time that Teal'c answers it in the negative. Janet doesn't say anything at all. She should be close to this man, but she doesn't know him at all.

With a glare, Teal'c bows to the lie.

"Well, I'll just check and see if he's ready for you," the nurse says leaving the room.

A few minutes later they are led into a room. The man doesn't look much like Daniel, but then again, Sam's father looks nothing like her.

"Hi, I'm Daniel's wife," she says.

Nick nods his head, "Janet, with twelve-year-old Cassie and a boy who will be born at any moment."

"He's got a couple of months yet, actually," she says with a smile.

"I'm pleased to meet you. Daniel followed my footsteps," Nick says.

"You must be very proud," Jack says. But Janet shakes her head, she understood exactly what Nick was getting at.

"He made a fool of himself. He staked his entire academic career on this belief that the great pyramids of Egypt were made by aliens."

"He didn't actually say that aliens did it," Janet protests.

"He was more insane than I was. I told him so. I told him to forget all that nonsense. He lost his apartment, his research grant, he hasn't published a paper in two years. Now where is he? Where is he now?"

"In a way, that's what this is all about. We wanted to hear exactly what happened to you back in '71 when you first found the skull."

"Nothing happened. There were no aliens," Nick says. He's been there long enough to know how to play the game. He knows that there is no benefit in telling the truth. That just gets you locked up. "No one believed me," he muttered.

"Daniel believed you," Jack says.

Nick smiles. So this man doesn't know his grandson as well as he thinks he does, "He didn't. He wanted to. He did listen. In the end he did not believe in my theories of the skull just as I did not believe his theories of the pyramids and the aliens."

"Nick, can you tell us what happened when you found that skull?" Jack prompts.

"Why?" Nick asks, looking as if he is starting to lose interest.

"Because we've found another skull, identical to the one you found in Belize," Jack confesses.

"Show me," Nick says. This seems like a reasonable request to him. Archeologists are used to touching things, looking at them, getting to know things with all of your senses. But to the soldiers it is something absurd. You don't show classified things to civilians in a mental hospital.

"It's in a high security facility at the moment. But if you tell us about your experiences, we…" Sam says.

"Then take me there," Nick says, hoping that this will not only give him a chance to exercise his mind with real work, but also get out of the mental hospital for a short period of time.

"We can't do that. It's classified," Jack says.

"If you don't, then I won't tell you anything," Nick says, standing up and looking out the windows, "It is up to you."

**Two Days Later**

"Jack told me that you can see Daniel," Janet says after Nick had been brought to the SGC.

"Yes, he wanted me to tell you he loves you, and he's going to be alright."

"Where is he exactly?" Janet asks.

Nick points to her right, and Janet is having a little bit of a flash back to when her sister was a little girl, and had an imaginary friend. She look at her husband and says. "I love you too, and you'd better be alright. I don't want to have to explain to your son that his father is invisible."

She fills a chill covering her stomach.

"Right now Daniel is…" Nick begins.

"Touching my stomach, I know, I can feel him," she says with a smile.

"He wants to know how Cassie is doing," Nick says.

"She's doing great. She had a history test, and she hated that you weren't there to study with her. She said she'd never be able to pass an Earth history test without you. But she got a B, and some confidence."

"He's a good father, isn't he?" Nick asks.

"Yeah, he is," Janet says, smiling at the empty air that is hiding her husband.

"I was never very good at being a father, and of course I was much worse at being a grandfather."

"I think all he would have needed was you to be there for him," Janet says.

Nick turns toward the place where Daniel stands. "He agrees, and I should have taken him. But I was a bad father. And I don't have any job skills besides field work, so what was I supposed to do."

There is a pause, and then Nick frowns at the space which contains Daniel. He says "I couldn't have taken you with me to South America. It was dangerous, and you were just a little boy."

"You could have," Janet and Daniel say at the same time.

-0-0-0-

Janet wakes up to the sound of a sob in the middle of the night. For a second, she thinks her traumatized daughter might have come into her bed with them. Then she realizes it is her traumatized husband.

"I'm sorry he left you again," she says, rolling over to put a hand on her shoulder.

"He didn't want me," Daniel sobs.

"He's an idiot. We want you… your family, your friends, the SGC."

"I wasn't good enough for him."

"Daniel, you're amazing."

"Back then, he didn't take me, because he didn't think I was good enough to go to South America."

"No, he didn't want you to be damaged. He didn't think that he could take good enough care of you," Janet can't believe she's justifying the actions of this horrible man.

Daniel doubles over, "I wasn't good enough."

"God, Daniel, you're good enough. You're more than good enough. You're one of the most amazing people in the world. And now I know where your self-esteem issues came from. If Nick was here right now, I would punch him in the face."

"Janet, who is going to take our kids if we die?"

"Daniel, we're not going to die," Janet says.

"My parents assumed there would be someone for me. We can't assume. I need to know my kids are never going to be rejected, never deal with foster care."

"Do you think we should go with my sister or my mom?" she asks.

"Either one would do a good job of taking care of our kids," he says.

"I'll call my sister in the morning, ok?"

He nods, and is still looking at crying. "Honey, I'm here. I'm not leaving," she says softly.

He turns to her offer of a hug.


	47. Part 5 Chapter 1

**One Month Later**

Shelby loves her job. Strike that, Shelby loves parts of her job. But she is, after all, a candy striper. So her job not infrequently involves such plebian tasks as laundry.

"Did you hear about the sparks in the gate room this morning?" one gossipy nurse asks another.

"No, who?" she whispers back.

Shelby tries not to listen. Not only is gossip a sin, but it's also usually a lie. But the next words penetrate her attempted ignoring. "No, it was Teal'c and some Jaffa chick."

Shelby knows her relationship isn't well-known at the base, so these women aren't trying to be cruel on purpose, but they are certainly being cruel.

"I can't imagine any sparks coming from Teal'c. Does he have any emotions?"

Shelby snorts to herself. She knows her husband does have a lot of emotions, and she has been privy to more than a few of those sparks himself.

"Oh, the way I heard it they were an inch apart, staring at one another."

It really was too good to believe. Shelby never should have thought that someone like Teal'c could end up with someone like her.

-0-0-0-

Shelby and Teal'c don't often see each other at work. Sometimes they'll meet for lunches in the infirmary, but often Shelby studies over lunch time, and usually Teal'c eats with his teammates.

Of course, if Teal'c shows up in the infirmary when Shelby is working, they see each other. But then they are all professionalism, and they don't really have time to talk.

She's never lurked outside of the conference room waiting for him before.

"Shelby," Jack greets her, looking alarmed.

Teal'c turns his head slowly, as if he's reluctant to move his eyes from a… well, for lack of a better term, Jaffa chick. A scantily-clad, very beautiful Jaffa chick that is looking at him with the same sort of lovey-dovey face.

"Hi, Teal'c," Shelby says, moving closer to him, trying to be possessive while not being unprofessional in front of the general.

"Shelby I would like to you to meet Shaun'auc of the Red Hills. Shaun'auc, I would like you to meet Shelby."

Shelby raises one eyebrow in an unconscious imitation of her husband at the way he doesn't tack on something about them being engaged. "I'm his fiancée," she says, waving her hand in his face to display his ring.

"I do not know what that word means," Shaun'auc says.

"I did not mention our relationship before, because Jaffa do not have such a relationship, and therefore would not understand the word for it."

"Well, I would think you could explain it," Shelby says.

Shaun'auc doubles over a bit.

"Her symbiote has reached the age of maturity, we must go to the infirmary," Teal'c says, reaching over to support Shaun'auc.

Shelby moves aside, and lets them walk down the hallway. Jack turns back toward Shelby when they are almost out of sight, and says, "Aren't you coming?"

"I don't think I'm needed," she says quietly, but what she obviously means is that she isn't sure that she's wanted.

"Oh, I think we need you," Jack says in a way that let her know that he's possibly more worried about Teal'c's behavior than she is.

-0-0-0-

Shelby stands behind the group that is crowded around the hospital bed. She watches her fiancé talk to this women, obviously someone he once loved. The question which is pounding her mind is 'Does he love her still?'

And she starts to think thoughts that she does not want to think. Thoughts that terrify her. Her husband is almost a hundred years old. There must have been lots of women. Women that he loved deeply.

Women of his own culture. Women of his own race. Women of his own species.

She could never be these things to him.

How did she expect to keep him?

Her only choice now was to make a fool out of herself by fighting for him, or to let him go gently.

And Shelby never like to look like a fool.

"I gotta be getting to class," Shelby says softly.

Jack gives look which clearly says he intends to guard her fiancé while she is gone.

Teal'c says nothing, even though he really should have known that she was not going anywhere.

-0-0-0

Teal'c walks into the conference room where Shaun'auc is staying, "The Tok'ra council is considering your offer," he says.

"My symbiote is eager to meet them. I hope they can reach their decision within the time," she clutches her stomach, and doubles over in pain. Teal'c is careful to barely touch her, but helps her get up.

"Your pain grows worse!" Teal'c asks with concern.

"Yes," Shaun'auc admits.

"For what reason did you wait so long?"

"I was afraid you would not believe. Since word came to the temple that you betrayed Apophis, I have thought of you every day," she says in a voice which sounded alluring; if, of course, you were a Jaffa who could notice small changes in vocal tone. Their symbiotes lessened all of their emotions.

"As a Shol'va?" Teal'c asks, taking a step back.

She takes a step toward him, making up the distance that they lost when Teal'c took a step away. "No, Teal'c. Because of you my doubts became certainties. When we were children, you were always the strongest, the bravest. That you would one day be First Prime was never doubted. But you did what no Jaffa before you had ever done. You challenged the gods themselves and won. Among many on Chulak you are as revered as the gods once were and yet you walk way," she puts up a hand to touch his face. He grabs her hand to stop him.

"My place is here," he says, talking her hand and dropping it to the side.

"Is it? Bra'tac cannot be expected to bear the burden alone. It was you who first began walking this path. Do not abandon those who have followed you this far!"

She turns away, and he spins her around in fury. Touching her shoulders, but no more than that, he tells her, "I have abandoned no-one."

He lets her go, and she takes a couple of steps away before she turns, "When I die and you are the only one capable of teaching others what I have learned, what will you do then?"

"Do not concern yourself with me," Teal'c says flippantly.

"I have all but given my life for a cause that you inspired!" she shouts at him. He turns to leave the room, but her voice stops him. "What did it show you?"

"The murder of my father at the hands of Cronus."

"It wanted you to know fear, but you are stronger than that. My first communion was much the same, but with time the images it chose to share with me began to change. With time, I began to teach it a new way," she says. She smiles at Teal'c and says, "I do not wish to lose you for a second time."

She leans forward and starts to kiss him. Teal'c pulls away, and she look at him strangely. "I did not have time before to describe to you the meaning of the word fiancée."

"Yes, it's that thing you have with that Earth girl. She's very young, isn't she?"

"Indeed," he says. He pauses before he moves on, "On Earth there is a great deal of time between deciding to be married and actually engaging in the ceremony," he explains.

"So you've agreed to marry this child?"

"She is not a child, and our marriage is quickly approaching."

"Maybe the reason you didn't tell me before has nothing to do with not having the time to tell me," Shaun'ac says.

"That is incorrect," he says, walking out of the room without offering her another word.

-0-0-0-

"I have returned to our place of residence," Teal'c says as he enters the house.

Usually, she comes out to meet him right when he comes home when she is available. Maybe she isn't home, he thinks to himself. He runs through his schedule in his head, and comes to the surprising conclusion that she lied about having a class earlier today.

Either that or her schedule changed, and he didn't previously inform him. That was more likely, Shelby would not lie to him.

He moves over to the freezer to take out one of the pre-made meals that are common on this world.

Shelby comes around the corner into the kitchen, and startles him.

Not that anyone could tell he was startled. But if you've spend enough of your life in war you react to every movement, especially unexpected ones.

"You're home late," she says.

"I kel'no'reemed at work."

"You Kal-no-reemed with Shaun'auc?" She basically just asked if her fiancé is sleeping with someone else. But she's pretty sure he's not going to put the earth innuendo together with the Jaffa word. Even if Jaffa slept with someone, he still wouldn't have slept.

"That is incorrect."

"Ok, so why did you kel'no'ream at work? You never do that!"

"I was attempting to contact my symbiote," he explains.

"That snake in your belly? Why would you were try to talk to it?"

"Shaun'auc says that she managed to convince her symbiote that the Goa'uld are evil. I was trying to do the same."

"But you weren't with Shau'aunc after I left?" Shelby says hopefully.

"That is incorrect," he says.

"Ok, so I'll find an apartment," she says.

"Why would you move out so close to our nuptials?" he asks.

"Are you kidding me? Do you really think you can cheat on me, and I'm going to keep living with you? Still marry you? No way!"

"I did not cheat on you," he says.

She examines his face, and wonders if she would be able to tell if he was lying. She can recognize emotions on his face better than anyone else, at least anyone else who is not Jaffa. But she's never thought about whether or not she can figure out if he is lying. She'd always assumed that he would never lie to her.

"Maybe you didn't cheat on my physically, but the way you looked at her was totally cheating."

"I am sorry if my expressions offended you, you have been telling me that I need to have more facial expressions."

"That is not the point. Did you love her?" Shelby demands.

Teal'c slowly nods his head.

"Goodnight," she says, trying to spin out of the room.

"I have lived for a hundred years. Did you imagine that I had never experienced love before I met you?"

"I did!" she says turning to yell at him, "Because you told me so."

"You are incorrect," he says, his voice still annoyingly calm, "I mealy informed you that I loved you with more intensity than I have ever loved another."

"So you're trying to say that you love me more? I saw the way you looked at her, and you have _never_ looked at me like that!"

He looks at her silently for a minute, and then he says, "When I was last with Shau'auc, I sensed that she would have been open to a physical relationship."

"Well, pin a rose on her nose," Shelby says.

"I did not reciprocate her advances," he says.

"Well, after we break up you can go and reciprocate her brains out," Shelby says.

"I loved her, but I can live without her. I have, for half of a century. You I could not live without," he says gently.

Shelby melts slightly, and allows him to hug her although his body is still stiff with tension.

"How many were there?" she asks with her face in his shoulder, "In a hundred years, how many women have you loved?" Suddenly she pulls away, and speaks frantically, "Don't answer that question. Don't ever answer it. I'm not sure that our relationship is going to survive the answer to that question. A hundred years, I'm sure there were a lot. You're with me now, you're choosing to be with me now, and that is all I need to focus on."

"Five," Teal'c says.

"What?" Shelby asks.

"I have loved five women. And you are the one that I loved the most deeply," Teal'c replies.

She smiles, "I'm going to be a jealous idiot as long as she's on Earth. So I apologize for anything I do until she leaves."

"Hopefully, that will not take a great deal of time," Teal'c says.

**The Next Day**

Shelby wakes up to the smell of bacon. Teal'c has never cooked for her before. If she wasn't around, he'd make TV dinners or toast for himself, or for the girls, if they happened to be around. But he'd never actually cooked, and never when she was in the house. He'd never said as much, but Shelby figured it was part of that whole "women's work" kind of thing that was pretty well ingrained in Teal'c's head (even though he'd gotten smart enough to know not to actually say that in front of Shelby).

She comes out into the kitchen, and gives her husband a peck on the cheek. She figures this is guilt about her jealousy, "Thanks for making breakfast."

Teal'c nods his head, and hands her a plate.

She sits down at the table, and begins to eat. Teal'c sits across from her, but he doesn't have any food.

"Did you already eat?"

"I am not hungry, man," he says staring at her.

She puts down her fork. "Ok, what's going on?"

"Have you ever considered the prospect of living off-world?" Teal'c asks.

Shelby's eyebrows shoot through the ceiling, "You're asking me if I'm going to stay with you if you go traipsing through the universe following your ex-girlfriend?"

"Shaun'auc has taught me how to commune with the Goa'uld. I believe that spreading this knowledge to other Jaffa would be the most effective way to end the reign of the Goa'uld," Teal'c says.

"But you swore an oath of loyalty to my planet," Shelby asks sadly.

He nods his head, "That was when I believed that fighting alongside the warriors of your planet was the most effective way of combating the Goa'uld. I no longer believer this to be true."

"So, you want to know if I will follow you, and watch you spend time with your girlfriend?"

"If we return to Chulak, I will visit different villages than Shaun'auc."

"If I say no, are we done?" Shelby asks.

"If you say no, then I am done with this plan," Teal'c says.

Shelby eyes well up. He's willing to give up his purpose in life for her. And she's not going to let him do this. "You'll help me adjust to life on another planet?" she asks.

"Indeed," her husband says with a wide grin.

**Two Days Later**

Shelby runs through the Goa'uld greetings in her head. Words, bow. Which greeting do you use for the light ash emblem again? She remembered the dark ash, and the gold, but what were the words for the light ash?

"I have rendered my resignation, are you ready?" Teal'c asks.

No, Shelby mentally screams. She's crammed as much studying into two days as she can. She's said goodbye to her family, but she is nowhere ready to step through a stargate and live the rest of her life on another planet.

She knows that Teal'c did this. But she's not sure if she can. She smiles, and hopes that her fiancé is as bad at reading facial expressions as he is at making them.

The Stargate activates, and Teal'c rushes into the gate room. Shelby walks after him.

Shaun'auc is carried down the gate room in a stretcher. Her face has the pallor of death.

Teal'c bows close to her face, and whispers words in Goa'uld.

Shelby tries to remember the meaning of them, but she isn't very good at other languages. She has no idea what it means.

But she knows, looking at her husband's face that he is grieving deeply. He loved this women, he loved this women intensely.

Yet, he loved her more. He choose her over this women.

She walks up next to him, and wraps an arm around his waist. "I'm sorry," she says.

"I am too," he says.

**One Day Later**

When you're in love with someone who the majority of their lifespan before you were born, there are things going to be things that you don't know about them. There are going to be a lot of things you don't know. She just didn't know how many of them there was.

She never realized how much darkness was in the heart of the man she had planned to spend the rest of her life with.

Jaffa revenge was a scary thing.

"Be careful," she'd told him before he'd left, but the words were ridiculous. She had no worries that anyone was going to harm her husband. She was a lot more worried that he was going to harm himself, harm his soul.

She wanted to tell him not to kill the man. To let someone else do it. But she knew that he wouldn't. And she knew also, that he shouldn't. Asking someone to kill for you was even worse than killing for yourself.

She knows it's not the first time her husband has killed a bad man. She knows it's not the last time that he will.

And she hates it, even though she loves him.

**Note: Of course, he didn't kill Tannith (yet) but I didn't want to go into that quite yet. This chapter was already pretty long.**

**Also, for some reason I thought Teal'c was 70-ish. But I was re-watching "The Light" where he confesses to being 101 years old in season four. So I did a quick change on a couple of chapters I was close to posting. But I didn't want to re-post the one chapter a long time ago where Teal'c refers to being about fifty years older than Shelby, when he would really be closer to eighty. I'll just do it better in the future.**


	48. Part 5 Chapter 2

**A Month Later**

Daniel rushes in from a mission to see his wife sitting in the infirmary. "I see you finally took my advice about putting your feet up," he says going over to kiss her.

Janet's face scrunches up.

"Well, ok, no kisses then."

"It wasn't you," Janet says with a laugh, "It was just a contraction."

"I contraction? You're in labor? We're having the baby here? I thought we were going to have the baby in the hospital."

"Relax, honey we've got a lot of time before this baby comes," Janet sooths.

"Why didn't you have them recall me, and have someone drive you to the hospital?"

"I was fine."

"You're having a baby, Janet!"

"I know, and as a doctor I knew there was enough time to wait for you. Now you can drive me to the hospital, or if you can't get the panicky look off your face I could get someone to do it for me."

"I'm fine," he says helping his wife stand up.

-0-0-0-

"I am not comfortable," Janet says.

"Well, you're pushing a human out of your body, so I'm not surprised," her husband says.

"You are so not good at the comforting thing," she says.

"Sorry," he says with a laugh.

"Oh, oh, but you know what you are good at?" she asks.

Daniel smirks.

"Not that, I'm not thinking about that. You can tell by the way I'm in labor," he says.

"What do you need?" he says.

"You know that thing where I sit between your legs? I think it would really make my back stop hurting," she says.

"Honey, you're in a hospital bed."

"We did it in Lamaze."

"You weren't in a hospital bed in Lamaze class."

"Daniel!" she screams his name in a contraction.

"Scoot," he says moving her forward, and sliding in behind her. "Where should my arms go exactly?" He says with his arms outstretched awkwardly.

"Can you put them around my belly?" she asks.

"This ok?" he asks obeying her.

"Yeah, it's the first time I've been comfortable in two days," she says relaxing back against him.

"Sir, you can't be up there," a nurse says entering the room.

"Oh no, see my wife is in labor, and she gets whatever she wants," he says.

Janet leans back, yep marrying the Delectable Daniel Jackson was such a good choice.

"Sir, that is not an optimal position for child birth," the nurse says.

"Well, actually my wife, the doctor, doesn't seem to think it's a problem. The majority of early civilizations gave birth squatted, so…"

Janet laughs, and looks at the nurse, "You're not gonna win, honey."

The nurse slips out the door.

"God I love you," she says to her husband.

"You too," he says kissing her temple.

-0-0-0-

"Daniel, you delivered two babies before, right?" Janet asks.

"Yes."

"I want you to deliver ours."

"Honey, there are real doctors around…"

"Daniel, please?" she pleads. "I want the first person to hold our son to be his father."

"Ah…ok, gloves, I'm going to need gloves," he says slipping out from behind his wife, and lowering her back down against the hospital bed gently.

-0-0-0-

"Janet, it's out son. Our son is coming out of you!" Daniel exclaims.

"Not helpful!" she comments.

"Oh, but he's perfect. Hey William, it's Daddy."

"Don't talk to him until he's out of me!" Janet complains.

"I've been talking to him for the last couple of months I don't know what would be different about this time."

"It's different. Make sure the chord isn't around his neck," Janet instructs.

"I could get a doctor in here if you wanted."

"No, I trust you," she says.

"And his shoulders are out, one more push honey," Daniel says.

And then their son slips into the world. Daniel holds his bloodied son close to his heart, and starts to cry.

"Hey, I'm still in labor here," she says.

"It's just the afterbirth," he says dismissively looking at his son.

"Yeah, well than you push it out of you," she says.

"Ok, you hold the baby, and I'll give you my full attention," he says.

-0-0-0-

Janet's SGC family has left, and her biological family won't be here until tomorrow. Daniel offered to spend the night with her in the hospital, but she sent him home.

So it's just her alone with the baby. She should be really happy. She was really happy when she adopted Cassie. She's been wanting this baby for a really long time. Now the kid is here, and she can't stop crying.

She knows that this is normal. There are so many hormones in her body right now, and it doesn't mean anything.

"I love you, Will," she says hoping that the words will make her feel all the things that she wants to feel. But it doesn't have any effect.

**A Month Later**

"Shelby I want to speak with you," Teal'c says through the slit of the door.

"Well, you can't come in here, it is bad luck to see someone before you marry them," she says sticking her head through the slit.

"I do not adhere to your Earth superstition," he informs her.

"Yeah, well, neither do I, actually" she says opening the door.

"You look beautiful," he says looking at her dress.

"Yeah, well, I think you already said this dress was beautiful when you saw it hanging on my door the day that I picked it out."

"It looks much more beautiful when you are wearing it," he says.

Shelby smiles, "What did you need?"

"I wanted to ensure that you wanted to marry me," he says.

"You think I was going to change my mind this late in the game? I definitely want to be your wife."

"That is well."

"Unless, are you having second thoughts?" Shelby says nervously.

"I am looking forward to an eternity united with you," Teal'c says. Shelby leans forward and kisses him.

"Ok, now get out of here, because if Janet finds out that you snuck back here she's going to kill you."

-0-0-0-

The music starts, and Shelby starts to walk toward her husband. The music is something from his culture. It's got a strong drum beat, and a lot of flute.

Teal'c wanted to have Shelby's mother walk down the aisle, but Shelby didn't think her mom deserved the honor. So she walks down the aisle by herself. Independent, like she has been for as long as she can remember.

She reaches the end of the aisle, and Teal'c takes his hands in hers.

She's not alone anymore.

First the Pastor walks them through the traditional vows of her congregation. Then they do a ceremony from his culture.

First Teal'c and Shelby turn toward one another, and they place their hands palm toward each other. Then they touch their foreheads together. Shelby knows that she is supposed to be meditating, but she's so nervous that she can't manage it. She feels like her husband's mind is drifting as well.

They let one of their hands fall to the side, and with the other they start holding hands in a more traditional pose. As the pastor winds a red chord around the union of their hands, he says, "You started life as two separate souls, and now your two souls are being united into one. May you journey through life together."

They have to leave the chord on their wrist until they are alone at the end of the night. They try to turn while tied together, and Shelby slams into her husband's huge side. Everyone in the room laughs.

-0-0-0-

Shelby tries to keep herself calm. She's just kissing right now, and she and Teal'c have kissed each other lots of time.

"Are you uncomfortable?" Teal'c asks pulling away.

"I'm just a little bit nervous, here," she says with a giggle.

"We do not have to engage in sexual activity, simply because we have begun our pledge," he says.

"No, I want to, I'm just nervous," Shelby says pulling the chord from their hand. There are marks left on her hands. Not ones that are painful and deep, but one that remind her she is forever bound to her husband.

He starts to kiss her again, and Shelby reaches over, and removes his shirt. She starts to run her hands over his chest but comes into close contact with his symbiot pouch. "Oh," she says pulling back.

"You seem surprised by my symbiot pouch, but I revealed its presence to you before we embarked on a romantic relationship"

"I know, but that was a long time ago, and I sort of forget it was there."

"If you would like me to put my garment back on I would be willing to do that," he says reaching for it on the floor where she tossed it.

"Right, well now I'm thinking about it. And I'm also thinking about how similar the shape of a symbiot and a certain part of male anatomy are to one another."

"My male genitalia is not sentient," he replies.

"Well, good to know, but it's still freaking me out."

"I could get some symbiot solution to maintain my symbiot temporarily while we engage in sexual intercourse."

"Yeah, but then you've have to take it out, and it would just be swimming around in a tank. And you'd have to ask for that from the SGC, so everyone would know that I was freaked out by this. And that wouldn't be a solution for today," Shelby says.

"I told you before that we do not have to have sex. You have a right to choose what to do with your own body."

"You've waited so long," she says.

"I am willing to wait for as long as necessary for you to not be made uncomfortable by my body."

"It's not that Teal'c, I love your body. I mean, it's all tight, and big, and sculpted," she says running an arm down his bare bicep.

"My sybiot is part of me."

"Well, not really, it's in a little pouch that is technically outside of you," she stammers. "Maybe, if we just start with our stomach's apart," she suggests.

"Indeed," Teal'c says with a sparkle in his eye that Shelby has never seen before. He goes down on his knees before her.

"Honey, the stomach's don't have to be that far apart," she says but the end of her words are cut off by the amazing sensation he's sending through her body.

**Two Days Later**

Shelby stands in the doorway watching her husband meditate.

"Did you know that kal-no-rem, causes a heightened awareness of your surroundings?" Teal'c asks.

"Sorry," she says.

He pats the spot in front of him.

Shelby comes and sits down in front of him. Teal'c puts up his hands, and Shelby lets his palms met his like they did on their wedding day.

"Hi," she says.

He smiles at her.

She runs a hand across his leg.

"This is not kal-no-reeming," Teal'c informs her.

"No, it's mating," she says using his word.

"Are you sure that my symbiot will not be an issue for you?" he asks.

"I don't think so, I mean you have me such a…nice experience on our wedding night. And you never complained when I didn't return the favor, and I just think I'm ready."

"Inform me if you change my mind," he says.

Shelby reaches over, and takes her husband in her hand.

-0-0-0-

Shelby runs her hand across her husband's rippling muscles. "You would make a really good sculpture, like a Greek sculpture."

"You choose to speak of strange things after you have engaged in coitus," Teal'c comments.

"Ok, let's not call it coitus," she says.

"What term would you like for me to use?" he asks.

"Lovemaking," Shelby decides after a few seconds. "Do you want to go to my bed now, I mean it's a lot more comfortable than your little mat on the floor. Although it doesn't have all the candle ambiance."

"I have no purpose for a bed," Teal'c says.

"Right, you don't sleep," Shelby says standing up.

"The act of cuddling after lovemaking is an important element of human sexuality is it not?" Teal'c asks.

"I don't know, I've never really done this before, but I think so," she says.

"I will cuddle you in your bed for a short period of time, before finishing my kal-no-reem," he says.

"Thanks."


	49. Part 5 Chapter 3

**The Next Day**

Janet is holding her son and crying. She remembers from her psych rotation that babies that are born to depressed mothers have the whole world stacked against them from the start. They get held less, and talked to less, and end up with delayed development. Most often it can mean the difference in 20 or 30 IQ points by the time that the kid enters school.

She is determined that isn't going to happen to her son. So every day she picks up her son, and holds him to her chest, knowing that this is the place where her son would be most likely to recognize her face. She'd started with trying to smile, and jabber to her son, but it had reduced to crying after a couple of minutes.

Daniel walks into the bedroom, and becomes alarmed right away. "What's wrong?" he says, walking quickly up to look at his son, expecting to see some kind of injury on his body.

"Daniel, I think I need some help," she confesses.

"Ah, ok, what do you need me to do?" he asks.

She shakes her head, "No, I'm sad, really sad."

"Oh," he says, and there is a really long pause that makes his wife wish she knew what he was thinking. "Am I doing something wrong?"

"No, this is hormone-based," she says.

"Ah," he says, looking relieved, "You're not going to McKenzie are you?"

"Are you afraid your friends at work are going to find out that your wife is nuts?" she sneers.

Daniel shakes his head, "No, I just don't trust him with my wife. I want you to get better, and I'm pretty sure he'd make you worse."

It's her turn to smile with relief.

"And you're not crazy. You just have a chemical imbalance in your head."

"Honey, that is what crazy is," she says smiling at him.

"But you're going to get better, right? I mean, when it's from a baby, it doesn't last that long," he queries.

"It can last anywhere from a couple months to a year. I didn't get help before, because I thought it might go away. You know, it might just be the baby blues that almost all women get, and not actually post-partum depression which fewer get. But now it's been a couple of weeks and…"

"It's time to ask for help, and get better," he finishes for her, smiling.

"Yeah," she nods. She'd been nervous about how he was going to take this news, and is relieved that he is taking it in stride.

"I'm really glad you asked for help," he tells her kissing her. "Now, I'm going to take little William for some Daddy time," he says, taking the baby from her arms.

"Daniel, I'm fine to take care of him…" she starts to protest.

"Go make an appointment and then go take a bubble bath or paint your nails with Cassie or something fun. I've got baby duty for a couple of hours."

**One Month Later**

Teal'c picks up the phone and stoically says, "My name is Teal'c of Chulak. Please state your business in contacting my residence."

"Teal'c, Mommy won't pick us up, and teacher left, and everyone left, and Becky Lynn and me walked over to the gas station to call you."

"Tell me in which cardinal direction you walked, and I shall be there shortly to offer you transportation to your place of residence."

"Well, I don't know what it has to do with a pretty red bird, but we went west from the school."

-0-0-0-

Teal'c has figured out by the tenth knock on the door that no-one is home, but Becky Lynn keeps knocking, each pound has a bit more panic in it.

"Your mother has no doubt taken another short vacation. Shelby and I shall house and care for you until she returns."

After Shelby and Teal'c got married, they converted his old room into a bedroom for the girls when they came to stay. There are two beds, and a dresser which was by now nearly full of clothes, a book shelf with one shelf full of children's books, and others full of toys, as well as two fluffy stuffed animals that the girl's loved.

They love the stuffed animals so much that Shelby had asked them if they wanted to take them home the last time they visited.

"No," Beck Lynn had said, looking at the pristine animal, "You take better care of it than Mommy ever would."

"Plus, it's clean and whole here," Tammy had added thoughtfully, not missing the comparison between herself and the toy.

Now, Tammy looks at the door of her house ruefully, "Mommy would tell us when if she was going on vacation."

Teal'c doesn't say a word. He tries hard not to disparage the girl's parents, but he doesn't believe it.

"She's done lots of things, but she's never left us without telling us before," Becky Lynn agrees gravely.

Teal'c catches the terror in the little girls' eyes.

"She's probably sick 'n needs help," Tammy adds.

"Is there a way to gain access to this house without causing damage?" he asks looking at the windows and doors.

Becky walks over and retrieves a key that is taped behind a drainpipe. She hands it to Teal'c, who pries it in the lock. It's old, and rusted, but the door gives way.

"Mom!" Shelby and Becky Lynn both call as they run into the house. Teal'c quickly attempts to outrun them, fearing what they might see if they get there before he does.

He was right to be afraid. When the run into their mother's bathroom, they see the woman fallen on the floor with an empty pill-bottle around them.

"Call 911, and bring me the phone, Tammy. Becky Lynn, get out of this room, right now!"

The older sister obeys as he starts the CPR which he was required to learn for his job at the SGC. But the younger sister stands frozen in horror.

-0-0-0-

It's Teal'c's first time in an Earth hospital. To be sure, he's spent a lot of time in the infirmary at the SGC, but this is a little bit different. Maybe it wouldn't be so different to him if he was only here for himself, but it's different with the two girls.

"Is Mommy going to die?" Becky Lynn asks, crawling onto the big man's lap.

"Of course not," Tammy says.

"But she didn't talk to me when they put her in the 'bulance. Is she mad at me?" Beck Lynn asks.

"No, you're mother was too ill to speak with you at the time," Teal'c responds.

"What does ill mean?" Becky Lynn asks.

"It means sick," Tammy says, her vocabulary having grown a lot since coming to know Teal'c.

"So if she's too sick to talk, does that mean that she's going to die?" Becky Lynn asks worriedly.

Just then a women approaches. "Are these the dependents of Mrs. Linstead?" the women asks.

"She talks like you, Teal'c," Tammy whispers, and the same time that Teal'c responds with "Indeed."

"Are you a friend of the family?" the women asks.

"I am their brother-in-law. Their sister and I have typically cared for them when their mother was indisposed," he replies.

"Their mother has had previous incidence like this one?" the women asks.

Tammy pulls frantically on his shirt sleeve until he leans down so she can whisper in his ear, "You never air your dirty laundry in public. That means that you never talk about the bad stuff that happens."

Teal'c stands up, "On previous occasions their mother has left them in our care while she went on vacations. I am a foreigner and am unfamiliar with your language."

"It doesn't really sound like you are unfamiliar with our language by the way that you talk, and I'd have to be pretty dense to not notice that you just got a patented 'shut up' whisper from that little girl. You're hiding something."

"I learned to talk from a book, but am quite unfamiliar with slang. The little girl was just informing me of my error without embarrassing me in front of you."

The women looks skeptically at him, but then says, "Would you and your wife be willing to care for them on a short-term basis, until we decide what custody situation we are going to have? We find that it is always best in these situations to keep children with people they know. Of course, there is some training you are going to have to go through to become certified to be a foster parent."

"We would be most willing to take care of the children until their mother becomes better."

The women smiles at the children, and then ushers Teal'c away from them. Becky Lynn looks very uncertain, and her big sister wraps a comforting arm around her.

"You realize, of course, that their mother might not be able to take care of the children for some time. There are going to be some custody issues."

"Are you the people who stole Shelby from her house when she was a child?" he asks, glaring at the women before him.

"We do not steal children. Someone from my office removed her when she was a child, because she was in danger. We intend to do the same thing for these children. Our goal is to keep them safe, and to return them to their parents as soon as their parents are able to take care of them."

"My wife, and I will care for her sister until her mother recovers. Then they will return to their home."

"I'm afraid we are going to be making those decisions," the woman says, bristling, "Including whether or not the girls will be able to stay with you. And she is no doubt going to need some psychological care before she gets her children back. We aren't sure yet if it was a suicide attempt or if she overdosed using drugs, but either way, we are not going to send children back into that environment without first making sure that they are going to be alright. So I need to know if you are only going to be willing to do temporary care or if you would be willing to do more long-term."

Shelby doesn't want kids. She's already spent a lot of time looking after these kids, and she's young to have this sort of a responsibility.

Yet, they are her sisters and they need her. Shelby had shared, once or twice late at night after a flashback or nightmare, some of the things that had happened to her in foster care. He knew that she would not want her sisters to go into that place.

If he wasn't married, he would take them by himself. He would love them, and take care of them, and raise them all by himself.

But, he was married, so he couldn't make this decision all by himself. After all, there was no way for him to take the children unless Shelby took them too.

"I am going to have to talk to my wife before I take them for very long, but we will certainly take them for a couple of weeks."

The women nods, and looks at the girls behind her, "I'm going to have to do a background check on you, and get some information before we make any choices about you placement."

"My place of employment can provide you with my background. I work at Cheyanne Mountain Complex," Teal'c says stoically.

"I'm going to make some calls, and see if we can clear them to stay with you tonight. In the meantime, are you going to be staying at the hospital?"

"Will they be able to see their mother tonight?"

"I do not think that that would be for the best."

"Then I will take them home."

"Can you give me your address?"

"Teal'c?" Tammy asks pleadingly, looking down at the child on her lap.

"We can finish this conversation in the presence of the children, can we not?" Teal'c says, moving over and picking the small child up in his arms. He doesn't say anything to her, it is not the Jaffa way to whisper meaningless lies into the ears of small children. But his strong arms relax her.

The social worker writes down his address, and goes off to check out this man's credentials. But she's already seen everything she needs to. She knows that these children will be safe in the care of their large relative. You develop a gut in her business, and her gut was rarely wrong.

-0-0-0-

"Where were you this afternoon?" Teal'c says, even more stonefaced than is typical for him when Shelby returns home that night.

"You know that I have a night class every Thursday," she says carelessly.

"Why did you not check your cellular device for communications?" he asks.

"You know that I can't have my cell phone on in class."

"Why did you not check it during the break?"

"I don't get what the big deal is. Whatever you had to tell me then, you can just tell me know."

"Your mother is in the hospital, because she consumed too many pills."

"What? Is she back on drugs, or did she try to kill herself?"

"The doctors have yet to determine which of those options is more likely."

Shelby shakes her head, "The girls are here, right? Did they get to bed alright?"

"They are asleep; however, Tammy has already awoken with a nightmare."

"They didn't see it, did they?" Shelby asks, for the first time realizing that her little sisters are seeing the same kinds of things that she saw so often when she was a little girl.

"Becky Lynn did not follow my directions. I attempted to shield her from what I knew would be a traumatizing event."

"Was mom conscious when they saw her?"

"No. It took much reassurance to convince them that she was not dead."

Shelby shakes her head, "When does mother get out of the hospital?"

"They don't know yet, but one of the child-snatchers was at the hospital. It would have been nice to have you there to talk to them with me."

"What do you mean by child-snatchers?" Shelby asks, alarmed.

"The people who take your children away from you because they do not think you are good enough at taking care of your children. They want to take your sisters away from your mother."

"I suppose social services would be sniffing around. What did you tell them?"

"Tammy informed me that you do not wash your laundry in front of them."

Shelby gasps, "She did not say that in front of them did she?" If the social workers thought that the family was hiding something, that would make it far worse for them.

"No, she was quite secretive about it. I do wish that you had briefed me in the proper treatment of workers in social matters before I had met the first one. I feel that then I would be more able to evade them."

"But they let us keep them, right? I mean, you must have done alright."

"We have been cleared to take care of them on a temporary basis. But the social worker has given us an important question to consider."

Shelby gives him a questioning look.

"They thought that the children might require long term care, and they were wondering who might be willing to provide it."

"They aren't going to need long term care. Mom is really good with social workers. As soon as they let her out of the hospital, she'll have the kids back. That's the way it always worked with me when I got taken away."

"I am not so certain that this is true. The social worker indicates that she will require care in a mental hospital."

"They'll be here a couple of weeks, and that is all," Shelby says in an assured voice.

"If it was to be for a lengthier period of time, how would you feel about that?" Teal'c presses.

"I don't really have to answer, because it's not going to happen; it's going to be short term, like it always is."

"It may be important for the children to know that they would have a place where they would be welcomed should they ever need it. I know that you are not fond of the idea of reproduction, but I was wondering if you feelings would change if you knew that it was your own kin that already existed in the world."

Shelby looks up at Teal'c with shock apparent on her face, "Of course we would take them if they ever needed it; they are my sisters."


	50. Part 5 Chapter 4

**The Next Day**

"It's time to go to school, girls," Teal'c says softly, entering the girl's room the next morning.

"Is Mommy still sick?" Becky Lynn asks.

"Yep, but after I pick you up from school, you can go see her," Shelby says, coming in behind her husband.

"Did you talk to Mommy on the phone?" Tammy asks.

"I did, and she is sounding much better. Now up, up; we don't want to be late for school."

-0-0-0-

When the family arrives at their mother's hospital room that afternoon, Shelby uses the military hand signs she learned the SGC to tell them to be quite and not move. The little girls don't know these symbols, but they can guess and obey them based on context.

Inside, they can hear the conversation between a social worker and the patient of the room.

"We have to take a suicide attempt seriously," the social worker says.

"I wasn't trying to off myself," the woman argues.

"Well, we also have to take a drug use very seriously."

"I've been clean for a long time, I just slipped up the one time."

"Addiction isn't something that is easy to conquer."

"I know that, 'cause I did it once."

"Would you be willing to submit to drug rehab?"

"I'd be willing to do anything that would help me," she says in a voice so genuine that only Shelby is jaded enough to doubt it, "Only I can't afford no fancy rehab."

"I think we could put you on a waiting list for a free program. The only downside is that free programs are much shorter in duration."

"I can work real hard at meetings 'n whatnot when I get out," she says earnestly.

"Of course, you won't be able to have your kids until you have completed rehab, although you are going to be released from the hospital today."

"I understand. You want my daughters to be safe, as much as I do. It just kills me that they had to see me like that. I talked to my eldest daughter today, and thank goodness she is willing to take care of them until I am able to."

The women smiles, "Well, this was easier than I thought it was going to be. It's not often that I get someone so cooperative and willing to change."

"I just appreciate all the help that you're giving me."

Shelby then moves into the room, and the rest of her little family follows her in.

"Oh, my babies! Thank you for bringing them in!" their mother says, extending her hands.

"I'll let you see your family now," the social worker says, patting her leg softly as she walks out of the room.

As soon as the social worker is out of earshot, Shelby says, "I'm glad you're asking for help." She doesn't believe a word of what she overheard, but she's pretty sure that her mother won't put any effort into trying to deceive her own family. And she wants the truth out as soon as she can. She wants her family to know that she is not wrong in not believing a word that her mother says.

"Well, you know, that is the fastest way to get them back. With that speech I just gave the social worker, she's going to rush me through. I'll be in rehab in a couple of days. The cheap one is usually 14 days; if I suck up real nice I'll be out in a week. Then I'll be free."

"So all that junk 'bout you wanting to get clean was just for the law," Shelby says.

"No, not just for the law, I needed to get my babies back," she says, extending her arms to the little girls. They grin, and move over to hug her.

Shelby looks at her skeptically. But Teal'c believes whole-heartedly. He understands that love does not always make you good. He knows that when you love someone you want to be near them, even if being near them would be hurtful. This women is doing her very best to help these children, to be the mother that the deserved.

She was just really bad at it; really, really bad at it. He could relate to that. There were a lot of regrets that he had with his own child. He wished that he had known of the Earth way of raising children when he was still living with his own son.

It was better than the almost father-free way that the children of Chulak were raised.

The young girls are believing it as well, and they are hugging their mother with huge grins on their faces.

Even Shelby isn't callous enough to take this away from her sisters.

**Two Days Later**

"Hey, mom, can you help me with my homework?" Cassie asks, walking into her parents' bedroom. Her mother is face-down on the bed, sobbing.

"Can I help?" Cassie asks awkwardly. She isn't sure how to deal with this.

"I'm fine," Janet says. She hasn't had a just-cry-uncontrollably-for-no-reason sort of incident in a week. She still feels like every moment she makes is slugging through quicksand, though. But she is still slugging.

"You don't look fine," Cassie says, sitting down on her bed.

"Bring your homework in here, honey," Janet prompts her.

"No, it's ok. I mean, you have enough to deal with. I am going to ask my teacher tomorrow," she says.

"Really, I'm better now," Janet says, offering a smile that she hopes is convincing enough that her daughter will believe her. She'd already begun to forget what real facial expressions looked like.

The baby starts to cry right then. "I'll get him," Cassie says, standing up to fetch her baby brother.

"I'm pretty sure this fussiness is caused by the fact that it is time for him to eat," Janet says. The baby is still breast-feeding, because that is one of the more natural ways of fighting post-partum depression.

Janet walks into the baby's room, offering a smile which her daughter knows to be fake, but which the infant simply assumes is the way that Mommy smiles. He's known nothing different.

"Do you ever regret him?" Cassie asks, watching the interaction.

"Of course not! Why would I regret him?"

"You haven't been the same since he was born."

"Honey, your father and I talked to you about this. This is just a temporary chemical imbalance. I am going to get better, and I'm trying to keep it from affecting my kids. I'm sorry I haven't done a very good job of this."

"You have, mom. I just hate seeing you so sad. I mean, last week you didn't even get out of bed on your day off."

"I know, honey," she says, giving her daughter a smile which is real, even though it is sad. "I'm trying my hardest to get better. I am going to get better, sooner rather than later."

Cassie nods looking at her little baby brother.

"This isn't his fault," Janet says looking up at her.

"If you didn't have him, you never would have got depressed," Cassie says.

"Sweetie, he didn't do anything wrong. All he did was get born. This is my body's fault. It decided to screw up, not him," she says firmly.

William has finished eating, and his mother covers herself before pulling him up for a burp. "Go get your homework, honey."

"You're sure you're up to it?" Cassie asks.

"Yes, honey," Janet says, holding the small child near her as she follows her daughter up to the room. The feeling of the small child is one of the best depression fighters she'd discovered into since this whole thing started. It's tough to be sad when you have a tiny happy baby cuddled close against your flesh.

But she still is. She can't wait until this has passed.

**One Week Later**

They've been a family for a while, a real family. Teal'c likes it. He's never really been a part of a real family before. There is really no such thing as real families on Chulak.

He hates to see the girls go back to their mother, even though he actually believes that is probably the best thing for them. He is going to really miss being a real family. He and Shelby don't qualify as a family, no matter how good they are as a couple. Neither of them are in contact with any of their family, besides these two little girls and their mother.

"Teal'c, you should come with us to Mommy's house," Becky Lynn protests in the back seat of their car.

"I can't do that, little one," he says, stretching his large arm back into the car at a painful angle for him so she can grab on to his arm. She takes it, and it makes her smile.

"Mommy is all better, you'll be much happier back at your own house," Shelby says in a voice that really sounds like she believes it, although Teal'c can tell from her face that she does not.

"What if she gets sick again?" Tammy asks seriously.

"Then you will call us, and we will come there, and help you," Teal'c says firmly.

"Right. You don't need to take care of this by yourself. It's adult stuff," Shelby says, glancing in the rearview mirror to make sure that her sisters are understanding her.

They nod their heads.

-0-0-0-

Shelby doesn't miss the fact that her mother has lost weight. That means that the detox was at least genuine, even though it might not necessarily be long-lasted. "How ya feeling?" she asks.

"Better now that I'm out of that place and back with my babies," she says, kneeling down and opening her arms to the small children.

She looks so genuine that Shelby feels jealous. She tries to remember if there were good times when she was little. She is old enough to know that memory is selective, but as hard as she tries, she only remembers the bad times and the worse times.

Maybe there were good times which her anger had made her forget.

Maybe there was no good times, and she was the practice kid, where all the mistakes had been made in preparation for the day when these children, these true children would come to exist.

"Mommy!" Becky Lynn says. She's so young that she has already forgiven her mother for everything that she had done.

Tammy stands back, until her mother comes to her. Then she reluctantly submits to a hug.

"Ya wanta stay for a bit?" Shelby's mother asks her.

She shakes her head, but Teal'c says "yes". And they stay for an hour, with the closest thing to family that either of them have these days.

**Who Days Later**

The O'Neills are playing a game of baseball in their backyard. Emma and Ty have just taken their turn at bat, and then Hannah wobbles up to bat. Her grandfather runs up behind her to stabilize the bat.

The toddler stomps her foot, barely missing Jacob's foot, and says, "Me do myself."

"Ty, why don't you go grab your old tee for your sister?" Sam suggests.

"Me do myself!" the girl repeats.

Jack shrugs, and tries to pitch it easy and low over the plate for the toddler.

Hannah bites her lip, and lets Sam return the ball to Jack. Jack takes the opportunity of catching the ball to walk a couple of steps closer without the girl noticing. He throws the ball even more carefully the second time, but she still misses.

Hannah is still totally determined, and can't wait for the third pitch. Her siblings, however, are getting rather tired of the whole business, and are rolling their eyes.

Hannah misses again.

"You're out, Hannah," Ty says.

"Is not!" she insists.

"She is out, though, three strikes," Emma informs the adults, assuming they don't know the rules of the game.

"I think my pitches were bad, I think that was three balls, and she has to walk," Jack puts forward.

"Definitely, worst throws I ever saw," Jacob puts forth, winking at the man behind Hannah's head.

"He gave you easy pitches, you're just too little, Hannah," her brother says.

"Not little!" she says, responding to the thing that is the most offensive thing you could say to the child of this age.

"No, you're not little, why don't you run around all the bases?" Sam says, trying to calm down a situation that she can see is quickly heading toward a tantrum.

"Nope," Hannah says staring down the ball, "I learn."

"You wanta ride bikes?" Ty asks Emma.

"Sure," she says, taking off.

Sam hands her catcher's mitt to her father before running after her children.

And Hannah spends the next hour trying to hit a ball.

"Where she got her stubborn streak from, I'll never know," Jacob teases Jack when the trio finally heads in when bedtime compels them.


	51. Part 5 Chapter 5

**One Week Later**

"Please explain why your people turn once a year from the worship of three gods to the worship of the undead tree," Teal'c says.

Shelby stares at him in horror, "Everything 'bout that sentence was wrong."

He tilts his head back to her, "Could you please be more specific in your correction of my errors?"

"Ok, well we don't worship the tree, which is definitely dead. And we don't worship three gods either, we worship one God with three personalities."

"If you do not worship the tree, why do you put them in the center of your houses?"

"Well, usually people don't put them in the center of the house. But our apartment is tiny, and so that was the only place for it."

"But I do not understand the purpose of the tree."

"I don't know, it's just something that people do," Shelby says with a shrug, "I could probably look it up on the internet."

"I will do this after you have fallen asleep." The fact that Teal'c did not sleep and Shelby did had caused their marriage to be a little out of the ordinary. After their 'mating', as Teal'c still insisted on calling it, Teal'c would cuddle Shelby for a while. After she fell asleep, he would get up and do a few hours of kel'no'reeming on a mat on the floor. Then he would get up and leave the room so that his nocturnal activities didn't wake her up.

"Ok, well, we have to decorate the tree now," Shelby says, holding up a box of lights.

"This tree needs accessories?" he asks confused.

"Yeah. Lights and ornaments," she says, smiling.

"What is the purpose of this?"

"It makes it pretty," she says, handing him the lights.

"I remain confused," Teal'c says, staring at the evergreen.

-0-0-0-

"Mommy, can I ask you a question?" Emma asks Sam when she catches her alone.

"Of course," Emma says.

"Daddy is stuck off world, but he isn't dead, right?" she asks.

"You're exactly right."

"I painted him a picture and wrote him a letter. Can you get it to him?" Emma asks, holding the paper up to Sam with a hopeful look in her eyes.

Sam seriously considers lying to the kid. She isn't sure what makes her tell the truth in the end. But she does. "Honey, we can't give your Dad anything, and he can't get anything to us. The last time we tried to contact him, it almost destroyed the world. Remember when I couldn't come home for weeks? That was because we were trying to reach your father. There is no way that I could get this to him. I'm so sorry."

"Is there Christmas on other planets?" Emma asks.

"I suppose there could be, if people who celebrated Christmas went to another planet, they would bring the Christmas with them."

"My Daddy celebrated Christmas," Emma says.

Sam is not about to point out the fact that the years which have passed since her father first went missing has only been a couple of seconds for her him. "Yes, he did."

"Does Santa Claus go to other planets?"

"I don't see why not. He is magical, after all."

"Then I'm going to ask Santa not to get me anything this year. Instead he can just bring my Daddy something real nice. I know that he usually doesn't bring presents to grown-ups, but I figure that's just 'cause there are too many of them. If he didn't have to bring me a present, it would even out, wouldn't it?"

"That sounds like a deal that Santa would take," Sam assures the girl.

"Ok, I'm going to go write him a letter. I hope he brings my Daddy something super-special."

As soon as the girl is out of the room Sam looks up at the ceiling, and says, "Boyd, you've got a pretty extraordinary girl there, I hope you realize that."

-0-0-0-

"Hey, Daniel, can I give you your present now?" Cassie asks one night when her mother has gone to work for a medical emergency.

"Why don't you wait a couple of weeks for Christmas to actually be here?" he asks.

"Well, because your present is too good for me to give to you in front of Mom. You know she is always sensitive, thinking that I like you more than I like her. And with the way she's been lately… I just don't want to push it. Don't worry, I got you a decoy present for when Christmas actually comes along, so she won't know I gave this too you earlier."

"You know honey, you don't actually have to get us anything. We're the parents."

"I know, but I'm a teenager. I'm not a little kid anymore."

Daniel unwraps the package that Cassie has handed him, and it reveals a leather bound notebook. He's seen it in her backpack, and on the desk of her bedroom more than once. He'd always assumed it was her dairy, but here was no way that a teenage girl would be giving her diary to her father.

He opens it up, and sees a sketch of the outfit that Cassie had been wearing when they found her. He flips through a couple pages of text before seeing a map.

"This is about Hanka," he states.

"Yeah. Maybe it's weird? I mean, this is part of my old life. Part of the family that I was in before that."

"I told you from the beginning, honey, you don't have to let go of your old life. It's good to remember where you came from, and remember your first family."

"But I started this when I first lived here. I am the only Hankan left. I wanted to write it all down, before I forgot it. I've finished it now. There is everything from fashion, to politics, to culture. It's not very organized, I'm afraid; I just wrote things down as I thought of them. But I thought, with you being an anthropologist…" she trails off, feeling foolish. This isn't really a Christmas present. This is a bunch of random thoughts jumbled on a piece of paper.

"I am unbelievably honored that you gave this too me. This history, it's a part of you," Daniel says. It makes a warm feeling spread through Cassie's chest, and makes her feel a whole lot more important than she had a moment ago. "This belongs with all of my mission journals, I think. I'd love to read through it, and ask you some questions if I need to."

Cassie grins, "Of course."

Daniel flips through it taking in a bit more detail. He grins, "This is very good. With a little polish, it would be publishable; that is, of course, if everything inside of it wasn't classified."

Cassie giggles, "I'm sure that's not true."

"I'm serious, honey. You are quite the little anthropologist," he says, pulling his daughter into a hug.

**The Next Day**

Hammond gave his premier team two weeks off for the Christmas holidays this year. They decided to celebrate the first day with this together at O'Malley's before heading off in separate directions to spend time with their families.

The Jacksons' new baby is, of course, the hit of the party. He is passed around and cooed at by everyone present, including a few airmen who just happened to be at the restaurant that night, and who are not strictly members of the party.

When Teal'c gets a chance to hold him the infant, he grins at him, holding him close to his chest. He says, "Infant, I am glad that you could join us at this gathering."

"You don't talk to him like that," Jack says with an eye roll, "You're supposed to be all 'goochy, goochy, goo'," he says, tickling the baby's stomach as he speaks.

"I have read that a failure to use adult language with an infant will impede their language development," Teal'c replies.

"And where exactly didya hear that?" Shelby asks, laughing at him.

"I learned this fact in a periodical intended for reading by parents," Teal'c says.

"You read a parenting magazine?" Shelby asks in shock.

"Why?" Jack asks. He's never even read a parenting magazine, and he is actually the father of three children. Leave it to Teal'c to make everyone else look grossly unqualified.

"I was endeavoring to increase the quality of the interactions between the kin of Shelby and myself," he says.

"What did he say?" Cassie asks, never having quite mastered the language of Teal'c.

"He did it for my sisters," Shelby says, looking at her husband with love in her eyes, "They stay with us sometimes, and he wants to be better with them. Even though he is already really good with them."

"Wow, you're going to make a great father," Cassie says.

"I already possess a son," Teal'c says.

"Right, but when you and Shelby start popping them out, you're going to be a great hands-on father," Jack says.

"Shelby and I have decided to forgo reproduction," Teal'c says, giving the child one more glance before passing it on to the next pair of arms waiting eagerly for his reception.

The room falls into an uncomfortable silence, which makes Shelby fidget in her chair. It's not that she was really that comfortable before. She's closer in age to Cassie than anyone else here. Even though she works at the same place as them, she's never been though the Stargate, or to war. She is used to being the oldest in those she is around, if not in years, in experience. When she was in school, she had always done more, and seen more horrors than other people her age.

But here… she was still a child, and she knew it.

"I don't mean to pry, but does this decision have anything to do with him being a Jaffa? Because, if so, it shouldn't be a concern. From what I can tell, when two Jaffa mate, their children are actually human until after the prim'ta ceremony," Janet says.

Daniel rubs his wife's back, and nods his head agreeing with her assessment.

"That is not the reason that we have decided to forgo reproduction," Teal'c says.

"We're a little bit more worried about my genetics than we are about his," Shelby says not looking at those around her.

Teal'c looks at his wife, and is overcome with her emotions. Empathy. It's not something that it's beneficial for a warrior to have. If you are empathetic in battle, you are going to be less likely to make a shot that might save your life.

But empathy is something that is necessary for a husband to have. Perhaps the reason that his first marriage was no more than a business partnership was his inability to feel what his wife was feeling.

"We will now leave this conversational topic, and go to another," Teal'c informs the group.

Shelby looks up at him in grateful surprise.

"Little Emma got an A on her report card," Sam says, bouncing the little girl on her lap. The girl beams up at her mother with a proud face when she hears her mother bragging about her.

"I got all As on mine," Ty says, glaring at his mother.

"And we are proud of all of our children," Jack says, catching his son and pulling him onto his lap.

Ty looks slightly pacified, but he still glares at Emma.

"Hey, mom, can I go play pool?" Cassie asks, noticing right away that some college students have walked over the pool table.

Her mother knows the reason behind the decision. She's noticed that her daughter has developed an interest in boys in the last couple of months. Her husband is still blissfully ignorant of this interest, and she wants to keep it that way for as long as she can. She knows that he is likely to overreact to the news.

So Janet is about to say no to her daughter's request. But Daniel says, "Yeah, just stay within eyesight."

Once Cassie has gone over to play, she starts to flirt with the boys. Jack notices right away, and meets Janet's eyes.

"Hey, Ty, can you go supervise Cassie?" he asks the child on his lap.

Ty laughs, "Daddy, older people are supposed to supervise younger people, and Cassie is much older than me."

"Yeah, but right now Cassie needs a big brother. But she doesn't have a big brother, and her little brother is much too little for the job," he says, giving a glance to the baby, "So I guess she's going to have to settle for a friend."

"What should I stop her from doing?" Ty asks. In his world, supervision usually involves being told that whatever he is doing is extremely dangerous.

"Oh, just going over there and talking to her should do the trick," Jack says.

"Can I help?" Emma asks cheerfully.

"I don't see why not," Jack says, offering the girl a smile.

"Me, too!" Hannah says, running ahead of her siblings.

"Cassie's allowed to talk to boys," Janet says with a smirk at her friend's antics.

"Oh, no, she isn't! Where are the boys?" Daniel says, jerking his head around.

The group laughs as Janet puts a hand on her husband's arm to calm him.

"My daughter is talking to boys," Daniel says in a stunned voice.

"She's growing up," Janet says.

"Our kids are never going to do that, are they?" Jack asks Sam playfully.

"Oh, yeah. Someday, all of our kids might be talking to boys," Sam says. She's known that this is a possibility for some time. And she wants to guage his reaction to this idea.

Jack shakes his head, "Sure they will, but not until they're thirty."

The group laughs again.

"So how has married life been treating you?" Sam asks Shelby.

"It's good," she smiles at her husband.

"Shelby is still incredibly busy with her scholarly endeavors and her work," Teal'c says, "I will be glad when her current term of studies ends, and we have more time to spend with one another."

Shelby takes his hand on top of the table, and grins at him. "In a couple of months, we're going to be done with this college thing forever."

"I know the infirmary will look forward to having you full time. You already do the work of several nurses," Janet says.

Teal'c's chest swells with pride for his wife's accomplishments.

"So what are you going to do over the break? Are you going to spend some time with Shelby's family?" Jack asks Teal'c.

"Actually, I'm going to be meeting Ry'ac," Shelby says.

"Your first trip to an alien planet?" Jack asks.

Shelby nods her head.

"Take bug spray," Jack teases, looking at Teal'c.

"Do not consume any cake," Teal'c shoots back, looking at Jack.

"That can end in unwanted marriages," Sam teases her husband.

"So can foot-washing," Jack says, looking at Daniel.

"That wedding actually turned out pretty good for me," Daniel shoots back. His wife grabs his hand in support. He takes her hand up to his mouth, and kisses it, "Not that I'm not incredibly grateful for my current wife."

"I like that you still love Sha're," Janet says.

"I've got some more advice for your off-world travels," Jack grins, "Don't save any princes."

"No regrets," Daniel says, pointing his finger at him.

"Do not climb into any sarcophagi," Teal'c retorts.

"That I do regret," Daniel says.

"Don't touch any cavemen," Janet warns with her eyebrows raised.

"Noted," Shelby says with a smile.

"You'll do great," Jack says with a big smile.

"I am a little nervous, I'm not very good with kids."

"Ah… Ry'ac will love ya," Jack says.

"I hope so."

"He will be required to do so," Teal'c says, hating to see his wife nervous.

"No, Teal'c, you have to let this thing between me and your son just happen naturally. You can't try to force him to like me."

Teal'c stares at her.

"Please," she says.

"He will like you all the same," Teal'c says, putting a hand on his shoulder.


	52. Part 5 Chapter 6

**One Day Later**

"So whatits like?" Shelby asks as they stare at the glimmering light of the Stargate.

"It is an artificial wormhole," Teal'c replies.

Shelby rolls her eyes, "I mean, what's it going to feel like when you go through it? I heard that some people throw up."

"Let out a breath and close your eyes right before you walk through the gate."

"You think I am going to throw up," Shelby says, giving her husband an annoyed look.

Teal'c doesn't say anything.

"I am tougher than you think I am," she says.

"You are tougher than me," he says as they step through the gate.

She's too bewildered by the shocking thing that her husband just said to notice the trauma of gate travel.

"Father!" a teenage boy says, running to Teal'c the second that he walks through the gate.

"Ry'ac!" Teal'c replies, hugging the boy close to his chest.

Shelby stands back a bit, and tries to remember if she ever received a hug like that from her father, or any of the father figures her mother thrust into her life after that.

She's pretty sure she didn't.

"Son, this is Shelby, my wife."

Ry'ac looks at her critically. "She is not a Jaffa."

"She is of the Ta'uri."

"Is she a warrior like your friends?"

"No, she is training to be a healer."

"Training? I'm in training! How old is she?"

"Ry'ac, it is considered uncouth to ask a women her age," Teal'c replies.

"That is only if she's old. Shelby is definitely not old," Ry'ac says.

"It's ok, Teal'c. I'm twenty-one," Shelby says, offering a smile to the child.

"Twenty-one? You were married to me long before this child you have married was ever born," Dray'auc says, coming toward them.

"Our pledge has been broken," Teal'c says.

"Still, our marriage lived longer than her, even if it is dead now. Come with me to the house, so we can celebrate a holiday that none of us celebrate," Dray'auc says with stoic sarcasm.

"Actually, my wife does celebrate the Earth holiday of trees which do not die," Teal'c says.

Shelby groans, "You're still missing the point of Christmas."

"There is also a green god with a heart defect who wears a red suit and steals toys from noisy children."

"Alright, that is it, no more television for you," Shelby threatens.

"I used to have my husband all of the time, but now I only get him when his new people give him time off for holidays that he does not understand," Dray'auc says.

"Will the green god steal my staff weapon?" Ry'ac asks.

"No, it is not a toy. It is a training device," Teal'c says.

"And no-one steals toys on Christmas. That is a story, it's fiction. Most of the stuff on TV is fictional. Santa comes around and GIVES good children gifts on Christmas. And he might just bring you some too, Ry'ac."

"Is Santa the god of Christmas?" Teal'c asks.

"No, Jesus is the God of Christmas. He's also the God of Easter, and every other holiday and day that isn't a holiday. He is just plain God," Shelby says finally, becoming annoyed with her husband's ignorance.

"She is radical in the service of her god. You left the service of one god to serve another," Dray'auc says.

"It's amazing, but I am pretty sure that your family actually hates me a lot more than my family does you," Shelby whispers to her husband.

"We can find other places to lodge tonight, if you are in any way uncomfortable."

"I'm fine," she says, shooting him a sideways smile.

-0-0-0-

Shelby is observing the Jaffa women's conversation over their work, and trying to figure out how to enter herself into the conversation or the work, when suddenly she feels a staff weapon slam hard into her shoulder. She turns toward her attacker, and is thrown one of the small staff weapons that the children of Chulak first learn to fight with.

She manages to catch the weapon, but only at an awkward angle. By the time she's reformed her grip, the back of the staff weapon has hits her between the shoulder blades.

Another blow comes toward her, and she blocks it with her staff weapon held out straight in front of her.

She could try to hit him now, but she doesn't want to be the sort of person who hits kids. So she just prepares to block the next blow.

The next hit is to the back of her knees, and it causes her to fall to the ground. Ry'ac pounces on top of her, and holds the staff weapon against her throat. It causes her some pain, but is a long way from being anything more than a minor inconvenience.

"Dude, Why are you attacking me?" she asks the boy, pushing the words past the staff weapon.

"If I were attacking you, you would no longer draw breath," he replies.

"Ry'ac!" Teal'c exclaims when he sees his son in the victory position over his wife, "Release her!"

"I was only sparring. A child of eight would have been able to do far better than she," Ry'ac says with spite in his voice.

"She is not Jaffa! She has received no training, and you will not attack her again!" Teal'c demands.

Ry'ac pulls away from her, and Teal'c extends his hand to his wife, and pulls her off the ground with more force than is strictly necessary.

"I wasn't trying to beat you! You are a child, and I don't beat children!" Shelby says, dusting herself off.

"I am not a child! I have been through my prim'ta!" Ry'ac shouts.

Ry'ac starts to walk away, but Teal'c catches him by the cuff of his shirt. "You will apologize to Shelby."

"Only after she does," he says with distain.

"She has done nothing which would warrant an apology," Teal'c tells his son.

"She stole my father from me," Ry'ac says reproachfully.

Teal'c is so surprised that he lets the child go, and Ry'ac squirms away.

"Look, I'm going to dial Earth. You stay here with your son," Shelby says, walking away from the stunned Jaffa.

"Shelby, I will accompany you back to your planet."

"No, stay here with your family," she says moving farther away from him.

"When I married you, you became my family," he says, continuing to follow her.

"No, your son is all that matters."

He tilts his head at her looking confused, "You matter as well."

"He is your kid, and so help me, I will not be the reason you are not a good father to him."

"Your own father chose not to have an active role in your life," Teal'c states.

"Yeah, and I knew you left your son. It should have bothered me before. But seeing it, seeing him… Your son needs you, Teal'c, and I did not stand between the two of you."

"I left my son long before I met you."

"I know, but he really hates me, dude, and if I leave, you'll get quality time with him."

Teal'c looks at her for a while, "You are a part of me. He cannot love me without loving you."

Shelby starts to cry, "You talk so good, Teal'c."

He gives her a hug, "Your father made a critical error in not choosing to spend more time with you."

"Teal'c you're making the same mistake with Ry'ac. You're a father. Sometimes I'm selfish, and I want to keep you all to myself. But the fact is, Ry'ac needs you more than I do, and he deserves to be your priority. You have to take him back Earth with you… him and your ex-wife."

"I cannot do that."

"He's your son, Teal'c, and no matter how much time you want to spend with him, you just can't do it when they are on a different word."

"Shelby, when we first met, you frequently referenced the fact that I was a prisoner. This was untrue, but for my son it would be true. He would not be permitted to leave the base, attend educational institutions, and engage in social interaction with others of his age. It would be no sort of a life for a child."

"Then you have to come here more often. You have to see your son every single day that you have off."

"With your work schedule, that would leave us no time to interact with one another," Teal'c says.

"But Ry'ac," she protests.

"Has a mother and step-father* who provide him with adequate care."

"And you think I am not receiving adequate care?" she asks.

His lips quirk almost imperishably in a smile, "There are things which I can take care of that no one else can."

Her stomach twists, and she giggles in spite of herself, "I can't decide if you trying to talk dirty is funnier or hotter."

He smiles at her.

"But I can take care of myself. I'm not your child," she says seriously.

"I know you are not."

"I'm young enough to be your child, or hell, your grandchild, your great-grandchild!"

"That is untrue," he protests.

"You're over 100! That is more than enough time for a few generations."

He touches her cheek, "You are not my granddaughter."

"You lived a lifetime before I was even born, and you're going to live a lifetime after I am dead. How could I ever mean as much to you as you do to me?" she sobs with tears in her eyes.

"I did not live until I met you," Teal'c says.

"I thought I got all of those cheesy romance movies out of the house," she teases.

"I drew breath before I met you. I ate, I kal'no'reamed, I worked, and I fought. I was married and had a child. But I never loved. Not before you."

"Teal'c," she says.

"And I will not love after you are gone. This life I live with you, it is the only one that matters. I will not have another life after you are gone."

"You have to Teal'c, I want you to be happy."

"There is much time before we have to worry about this. This is the benefit of falling in love with a particularly young Earthling."

She laughs at him. "You should find your son."

He nods his head, and takes a couple of steps away from her before he turns back, and gives his wife a searing kiss.

-0-0-0-

Shelby sits cross-legged on the grass, pretending to study a textbook that she brought along. She's really focused on the scene before her. Her husband sparring with his son.

He's letting his son win of course. Teal'c used to be first prime, and his son was still a child. But he isn't going easy on his son. He's allowing blows to come to his son, and she can't take it.

"Teal'c, you're going to hurt him."

"I am strong, father," the child says, puffing his chest out.

Teal'c turns to her, "I would never hurt my son."

Shelby rubs her arms nervously, refusing to say anything else.

"She's a scaredy cat," Ry'ac teases.

Teal'c kneels down before his son. "Ry'ac, there is something that you need to understand. When Shelby was a little girl…" he glances at his wife. He knows that she doesn't want him to tell, but he also knows he needs to. "She was hurt by her mother's husband."

"How?" Ry'ac asks.

"He hit her. He kept hitting her. She had bruises on her when we first meet. So you can understand why she wants to make sure that you would not get hurt."

"Father, why did she not fight back?"

"She left before he could hurt her again," Teal'c says avoiding the question.

Ry'ac walks in front of her, and hands her a training staff. "My father taught me to do battle with those who are unjust. I would like to train you as well."

Shelby doesn't really want to learn to fight. But she knows that this is the best way for her to bond with the boy in front of her, and she senses that it might also be one of the best ways for her to bond with her husband.

"I would really appreciate any training that you could offer me," She tells the boy, trying to imitate the formal Jaffa method of speech.

"Well, to start with, your grip on the staff weapon is pretty good. But your stance is awful. That's why I knocked you down. I don't usually go for that, I prefer intimidation, and making the opponent back up. But you were just begging to be knocked on your mik'ta."

"Ry'ac!" Teal'c scolds.

Ry'ac turns his face toward his father, clearly wondering what he did wrong.

"Use appropriate language around your stepmother."

"Yes, father," Ry'ac says respectfully.

***Ok, there is the logic behind Ry'ac still having a stepfather. Dray'ac's new husband betrayed Teal'c because Teal'c kissed Dray'ac. If Teal'c was with Shelby by then, he would not have been kissing his ex-wife. So Dray'ac's second husband wouldn't have died, and therefore Ry'ac has a stepfather. **


	53. Part 5 Chapter 7

Shelby looks around the dinner table, she has no idea how they are supposed to actually get the food into their mouths. She doesn't see any sort of utensil that she could use for eating. Ry'ac reaches into the pot, and grabs a fingerful of food which he puts into his mouth. Shelby is about to scold him when Teal'c's hand reaches his hand into the pot and grabs a piece of meat.

Shelby is stunned as she looks around as the rest of the family joins in the communal meal. She takes a piece of the meat and puts it in her own mouth.

She is starting to wonder what is going to be done with the sauce that is in the bottom of the pot. It looks delicious, and she can't figure out a way to get it into her mouth. Then Teal'c breaks off a bite of bread, and dips it into the sauce before bringing it to his mouth.

She repeats his action.

The conversation around the table is completely in Goa'uld. At first her husband dutifully translates every word for her. But soon he gets so caught up in the rapid fire conversation that he is not saying a single word.

She tries to guess the meaning of what they are saying based of facial expressions, and body language, but she can't really make heads nor tales of it.

She just smiles and enjoys the pleasant family scene.

Teal'c might say that the people of his world didn't have true families. But there is a lot of warmth and love around this table.

-0-0-0-

"I'm sorry if you felt a little left out during the conversation at dinner tonight," Teal'c says as the two of them are laying down to sleep that night.

"It's ok. It was interesting. I was wondering, is that what you feel like on Earth all the time?"

He looks at her, "I am uncertain. There is no way for me to know what you are feeling unless I project my own feelings on to you. Therefore, the answer to your question would always seem to be yes to me, and sometimes that answer would be an erroneous one."

She grins at him, "Ok… I felt confused, mostly. And a little left out. And like I was stupid."

"You are not stupid," he says, brushing a wayward strand of hair behind her ear.

"Is that what it feels like?"

He nods his head.

"I'm sorry I don't help you more. I never realized how hard you have to work… all the time."

"You have helped me to understand many things about your planet."

"I know, but… I never realized how much you gave up by coming to Earth. You come from this rich beautiful culture."

"A slave culture."

"None the less, there are some really beautiful parts of your culture, and I hope you feel comfortable practicing parts of your culture."

"I do," he says.

"I want you to teach me more about Jaffa culture. I want to better understand where you come from."

"You have learned to kel'no'reem," he says.

"Yes, a little, but I want you to teach me more than that. Maybe you could teach me how to make that great food we ate tonight."

"I do not know how to cook, that is women's work," he replies.

She raises her eyebrows at him, "You cook at home."

"It is not women's work on Earth," he replies.

She smiles at him.

He moves forward to kiss her.

"Not here!" she exclaims laughing.

"What is your objection to copulation on other planets?"

"We're in a tent!"

"All the copulation that I engaged in before being assigned my house in my fortieth year took place in a tent." then Tea'c pauses, "That is not true, once I engaged in copulation in a field."

"A field? Really? You're a wild man. But tents are not none for their soundproof qualities."

"Neither are fields," he says, running his arm over hers.

"When we get home, and will not be overheard, I will make it up to you," Shelby says.

"Very well," he says, holding her close to him.

"Every night you lie next to me as if you slept, but you never sleep," she says.

"Indeed," he replies.

"Do you ever grow bored?" she asks.

"I do not," he says.

She smiles at her husband's very simple way of speaking. "How do you keep from growing bored?"

"I think."

"About?" she says unconsciously mimicking his monosyllabic method of talking.

"About you."

"And what exactly do you think about me?" she asks.

"I think about your past, our future and how I can make you happier."

"Ok, give me the cultural experience of Jaffa tent sex," she says in his ear.

**The Next Day**

Daniel watches his wife as she tickles a young nephew. She has a genuine smile on her face. Janet's smiles have been rare for the last couple months.

But in the last week she's been much more cheerful.

Maybe the darkness has begun to lift.

Just then William starts crying in his grandmother's arms, and Daniel walks over to retrieve him.

-0-0-0-

"Hi mom," Jack says, wrapping his arms around his mother.

She gives her son a hug before turning to her grandchildren. "My dear Tyler, you are really getting too big."

"I'll try to get smaller, Grandma, but I just won't grow that way," he teases back.

"And you're getting more clever each and every day, my dear Miss Emma," she says, turning to the girl wearing a tutu. Ballet has recently absorbed both of the older children's lives. Ty has bowed to social pressure enough not to wear the tights out in public. Actually, he hates the outfit all together, but he does like to dance. Particularly the lift moves.

"You can't really tell that I'm becoming more clever just be looking at me," Emma retorts.

"And that is a very clever thing to say," her grandmother says with a nod.

"I'm cleber," Hannah informs her grandmother.

"Of course you are," he grandmother says, picking her up.

**The Next Day**

Hannah and Ty have ripped open all of their Christmas presents with great relish, and are now playing with their new toys.

Emma is looking at her toys with a somber face.

Jack and Sam share a quick look over their daughter's head which ends in the decision that Sam is going to go talk to the child.

Sam sits down next to her, and says, "Why haven't you opened your presents?"

Emma looks up at her mother with confusion, and pain on her face, "Santa wasn't supposed to bring me anything," she says mournfully.

Sam remembers with a flash that Emma had given up her Christmas presents in order to give her dad something nice.

"Honey, I'm sure that Santa brought your father something really nice."

"If he did, he wouldn't have got me any presents, and he got me lots of presents," she says, nudging one of them with her finger thoughtfully.

"Sweetie, Santa loves you so much that he got presents for both of you. He knew that you were such a good girl, especially with you asking for no gifts, that he decided to get your Daddy something as well as you."

"How do you know?"

"I talked to him," Jack says, sitting down on the floor with his wife and daughter. He makes a grunt at the bending of his knees. He is getting a bit too old for this having young children thing. He wishes that he had started this whole parenthood thing a couple of years earlier.

"Do you honestly expect me to believe that you know Santa?" Emma asks her father with a roll of her eyes.

"All parents do, how do you think Santa knows who is naughty or nice?" Mrs. O'Neill says brightly.

"You told Santa I was good?" Ty asks his father in shock.

"Of course I did," Jack says, looking at his son in shock, "Because you are a very good kid."

Ty looks thoughtful, as if he never considered this before.

"You're a good boy," Sam says, extending her arms to her son. He comes and sits on her lap, and Sam rests her chin on his head.

"And both of my daughters are good kids too," Jack adds, grinning at each of the girls in turn. Emma continues playing with her toy, ignoring the conversation, but Hannah beams at him.

"So Daddy got something nice in the black hole?" Emma asks.

"Yep, fruit cake, and ties, and best Daddy cups," Jack says holding up his own cup that he just received from his children.

"Black hole?" Mrs. O'Neill says with a quirked eyebrow.

Emma's eyes grow large.

"Your father is missing in action, isn't he?" Mrs. O'Neill asks carefully.

The girl turns and buries her head in Sam's shoulder.

"I'm sorry," her grandmother says, "This talk isn't very festive. Why don't you unwrap those presents, and find out what kind of a present Santa would bring a girl so good that she spends her whole Christmas wishing for presents for other people."

Emma grins, and begins pulling the wrapper off one of her presents. She gasps when she sees the doll tea set inside.

-0-0-0-

Giggling can be heard from the floor above as Jack and his mother sit down to share some eggnog with one another.

"So, you had a baby."

"That's old news, mom."

"And Emma's father is in a black hole."

"He is not in a black hole," Jack says carefully.

"Right, so what? Is he close to a black hole?" his mother asks, familiar with the way that Jack worded things from when he was a child.

Jack doesn't say anything.

"What kind of crazy science experiments are you doing in that mountain that you can lose someone in a black hole?" she asks.

"It's classified, mom," he almost whispers.

Mrs. O'Neill sighs, "I used to worry about you a lot. I worried about you when you were in 'Nam. I worried about you fighting communists for decades. I worried about you in the Gulf War. And then I stopped worrying about you. But today I realized I was wrong, again. Am I going to have to worry about you forever?"

"You don't need to worry about me, mom," he says.

She turns away from her son for a couple of seconds, and takes a long slow sip of her eggnog, "Do I have to worry about my daughter-in-law as well?"

Jack doesn't say anything, because after all those years he still feels bad about lying to his mother.

"Just know, if anything ever happened to the two of you, I'd move here and help Jacob take care of the children with you."

Jack feels teas coming to his eyes, "I appreciate that, mom."

"But you stay safe, son," she says pulling him over, and kissing him on the forehead like he did when he was a little boy.

"Yes, Ma'am," he says with a smile.

"I still want to know how you got pregnant," she says with a giggle.

"Classified," he says.

"Right," his mom says in an unconscious imitation of Jacob Carter's 'you've got to be kidding me' face.

-0-0-0-

Daniel has three books spread out in front of him as he lies in bed. His head bobs between the two of them. Janet sticks her head out of the bathroom two times before she actually walks out of the bathroom.

He glances up, and notices the outfit.

It's obviously Christmas themed, and involves a lot of silk and lace. Well, actually not _much_ silk and lace.

"New outfit?" Daniel asks with false calm.

"You like it?" Janet asks, beginning to fidget, feeling herself too brash.

"I love it," he says, starting the laborious job of putting his books away carefully.

Janet comes over to the bed, "I'm glad you like it, because it's part of your Christmas present."

He pulls his wife onto the bed next to him, "You're sure you're ready for this?" he asks.

"Yeah, you've been waiting for a long time. I had this pregnancy where I was very so sick, and we were hardly together. Then, the baby was born, and we physically couldn't do anything for a while. And then came the depression, and I just didn't want to."

"I can wait until you're ready," Daniel says, looking tenderly at his wife.

"As the outfit indicates, I'm up for that."

Daniel gives his wife a passionate kiss. Then he pulls away, and lets fall a bit of double innuendo. "I'm up for it too."


	54. Part 5 Chapter 8

**Spoilers for "The Curse"**

**One Month Later**

"He's dead," Daniel says unceremoniously as he enters the infirmary. His wife frantically tries to figure out the 'he' that Daniel could be referring to. If it were anyone involved with the Stargate program, she would know about it. But to be honest, her husband didn't exactly know that many people who were not a part of the Stargate program.

"Who?" she asks, taking a step toward him.

"Dr. Jordon."

"Oh, Daniel, I'm so sorry, what happened?" from what she remembered of the time that she met the man, he was not of the age where his death could be attributed to natural causes.

"I'm not sure. I only found out about it because Jack was reading one of the ridiculous tabloids that Teal'c likes so much. The story claimed it was the curse of Osiris."

"We're going to the funeral, right?" she asks.

Daniel pushes up his glasses, "Well, I'm going to go, but you don't have to if you don't want to."

Janet's eyebrows shot up, "You don't want me to go?"

"No, of course I want you to be here. I just didn't know if you wanted to be away from work and the kids for that long."

"I think we should bring the kids along," Janet says.

"Isn't William too little for a trip like that?"

"I thought you were going to let the doctor in the family worry about things like that," she reminds him.

-0-0-0-

The setting sun gleams off the tombstones in the graveyard as the funeral wraps up. It also shines in the bright blond tangle of hair of a very beautiful women. As soon as the service is over, she walks up to Daniel.

"Daniel, it is good to see you again," she says.

"Sarah," Daniel says simply.

Janet looks between the two of them silently a couple of times. Cassie looks between the two of them a few times as well. Then Janet puts out her hand, and says, "It's nice to meet you."

"Oh, right. Janet, this is Sarah," Daniel says quickly, looking at his wife.

"I inferred," Janet says slowly.

"I'm having a bit more trouble inferring your name," Sarah says with a smile.

"I'm his wife, Janet," she says.

Sarah snorts, "Janet Jackson."

"Yeah, I didn't take his name for exactly this reason," Janet says.

"Would you mind if I borrowed Daniel for a bit? To talk about old times and such?" Sarah says sweetly.

"I think the children would love to go along for a little walk," Janet says with a coy smile.

Cassie is getting as protective of her father as Janet is. She puts her hand in Daniel's and looks up at him with her best impression of doe eyes.

"Right, I just thought you might have wanted to shield your daughter from talking about death, but I'm sure you know best," Sarah says condescendingly.

"I saw my whole village die, I'm used to death," Cassie says flippantly.

Sarah blinks in show, not knowing what to do with that comment. Daniel gives Cassie's hand a squeeze in his. He knows that she is just trying to freak out adults. He did that himself sometimes when he was her age.

"So what exactly did happen to Dr. Jordon?" Daniel asks Sarah.

"The police said that there was a slow gas leak in the lab, and something must have caused a spark, the whole place went up, he was killed instantly," Sarah says, "We would have called you, but nobody knew where to find you," she says.

"That's… that's okay," he says. Maybe he should have called Sarah up, and left her his phone number, but he couldn't imagine this conversation going well. He couldn't imagine a way to answer the questions that Sarah would have in a way that she would believe.

"So what have you been up to in the last four years?"

"Five years, and I've been… busy."

"Really? I've looked for signs of you out on the fringes. There's been no papers, no research projects. It's like you fell off the face of the earth."

"Daddy does really important things," Cassie informs her proudly.

"Important things like saving you," Daniel says, smiling down at the teenager, who is acting more like a child today, even though he can't quite place the reason.

"I was never quite sure why you left," Sarah says, "You showed great promise."

"I was the laughing stock of the archeological community; I didn't think that I would be welcome."

"Are you joking? Even after everything that happened, Dr. Jordan never thought any less of you. You were his best student. He kept hoping that you'd find proof. Something to shut everyone up."

"No, he thought I was nuts," Daniel said softly. Even his own grandfather, the only family that he had, thought he was nuts, so why wouldn't his mentor? He could give the proof, if nothing was classified. But he's been in the Air Force long enough to know that everything is always going to be classified, that he's never going to be able to let anyone know about the wonders of the universe that he's discovered.

"You're a genius," Janet pipes up.

At least this family doesn't think he's nut. Well, maybe Will will, they haven't exactly had the discussion yet if they're going to let the little boy in on the secrets of the universe. Cassie knows, because she lived offworld. The O'Neill children know varying varieties of the truth, but telling their baby would technically be breaking the law.

Unless Janet did it, and then it wouldn't be so much a breaking of the law as a court-martial-able offense.

"I have to admit. I thought you didn't come back because of me," Sarah says.

Daniel looks eyes with his wife while he says, "No. No, that's not it."

"We could have ended it better than we did," Sarah says in a voice that is much too sultry for Daniel's family's tastes.

"Maybe. The truth is, I got caught up in something… incredible," he says, letting his eyes fall on his wife and children, and let the double meaning flow through them.

"You found something, didn't you? Something that supports your theory? Tell me. Come on," Sarah says.

"That would be classified," Janet says.

"But he can still tell me," Sarah says in a sultry voice.

"Okay. Let's just say… that what the world knows about ancient Egypt barely scratches the surface. The truth is more incredible than any of us ever imagined," he says with a smile.

"I want to show you something back at the lab," Sarah says.

"That sounds great," Janet says happily.

"Oh, this is some very technical material. Not the sort of thing a layperson and a child would be interested in," Sarah says dismissively.

"Actually, I love to see what Daddy is working on," Cassie says.

Daniel gives her a surprised look. She's never called him 'Daddy' before. She's called him Dad plenty of times, but 'Daddy' is a new one.

"And there is nothing that I love more than Ancient Egyptian artifacts, our house is full of them," Janet adds cheerfully.

"Ok, I guess you can come along," Sarah says, with disappointment clear on her face.

-0-0-0-

"Something's missing," Sarah says.

"Are you sure?" Daniel asks.

"Positive. A gold amulet. Daniel, I've got to find it," she says.

"Ok, I'll go talk to the curator."

Cassie is sitting in the corner, reading, after having touched all of the museum-quality pieces with the reverence that could only come from an archeologist's daughter. William begins to fuss. Janet juggles him around, and sits down to nurse with a blanket covering herself.

"I have to admit that I was surprised to see Daniel with two kids. I never thought of him as the domestic type."

Janet smiles, secure in the knowledge that she knows her husband better than this overconfident women before her, "Daniel really wanted kids."

"I'm sure," Sarah says in a way that clearly implies she doesn't believe it.

"When I met him he was terrified that he couldn't have kids. He tried with his first wife. In fact, I think Daniel's pretty much been trying to become a father since the day the two of you broke up." Janet doesn't say that the reason he wasn't domestic when he was with Sarah was because of her, but it's well and completely applied.

"I wonder if he knew that he had to give up being an archeologist in order to do it," Sarah says with equal bite.

Janet is about to argue with her, to tell her that Daniel didn't give up anything to be a father.

But he did, he gave up everything to be a husband at least, but not a husband to her.

And then, he gave up being an archeologist, anthropologist, linguist, and everything else he'd gone to school for years and years for. He hadn't given that up for her, or his children. But he gave that up for the Stargate.

"He's doing something amazing."

"Right, he's military," Sarah says with sarcasm.

Janet laughs, "He may be a consultant for the military, but I wouldn't exactly call him military."

"So he's a translator," Sarah says, shaking her head, "He could be so much more."

"He is so much more than a translator," Janet says.

-0-0-0-

"Janet, there is something decidedly Ra-like going on here," Daniel says cryptically as soon as he returns to Dr. Jordon's office a few hours later.

"These artifacts are from Osiris and Isis," Sarah corrects.

"I know, and I'm going to have to borrow the Isis jar and take it back to my lab for some more research."

"And where exactly would this lab be?" Sarah asks with a quirked eyebrow.

Daniel glances at his wife, not quite sure if this is the sort of thing that he should share. She gives him a nod.

"Cheyanne Mountain."

"I don't understand what the military would want with an ancient artifact," she says with a sigh.

**Two Days Later**

"Cassie, sweetie, I'm going to be going back to Chicago for a couple of days, you be good for your mother," Daniel says giving his daughter a hug.

"Please take me with you," she says, wrapping herself around her father.

"Cassie, before, it was mostly over a weekend, and you only missed a day of school. I don't know how long I'm going to be gone for for sure, and I don't want you to miss too much school."

"Then Mom should go with you," Cassie says decisively.

"Babies shouldn't travel that much, and your mother has to stay with Will as long as she is breastfeeding."

"I don't want you to go see Sarah without mom there," Cassie says with a frantic look in her eye.

Daniel is suddenly glad that he planned on leaving for the airport an hour early; this allows him to have enough time to have this conversation with his daughter.

He moves over to the couch, and pulls his daughter down on his lap. "Honey, I would never cheat on your mother."

"But you used to date Sarah, didn't you?"

"I did," Daniel says with a nod of his head, "But that doesn't mean that I still love her. Your mother is the only woman that I love, besides, of course, my kids," he says, tickling her gently.

"But if you don't love her, and you know that she still loves you, why are you going to be around her?" Cassie asks nervously.

"Because I need another look at the artifacts in the lab," he says.

He can see that Cassie looks unconvinced, and knows that he's not going to get out of the conversation without him being afraid of something. His only choice is whether or not he wants his daughter to be more afraid of him leaving her family, or of a Goa'uld.

"Honey, there is a Goa'uld on the loose, and I have to stop it. You're going to have to trust that I am not going to let anything happen between us. I care way too much about your mother to let that happen. I also care way too much about you and your brother to risk my marriage. This is all about business."

Cassie considers for a minute, "Ok, but you've got to be mean to her."

"Honey, I may not like her anymore, but that doesn't mean that I have to be mean."

"But you do have to be meaner to her. It's like in 'Into the Woods', when Red Riding Hood says that 'nice is different than good'," she says, referencing her current favorite musical.

He tilts his head at her, and says, "When did you get to be the wise one in the family?"

She smiles back and him, and leans over to kiss his cheek.

"I'm always going to be there for you, kiddo," he assures her. In his time as a foster child, he saw enough traumatized kids to know that her acting more childlike is a reaction to deep-seated fears.

Cassie smiles at him, "Have fun."

And Daniel knows that he made the right choice when he told Cassie about the Goa'uld. They have made this little girl feel so safe that she isn't alarmed that her father is chasing a Goa'uld.

**Three Days Later**

Janet had been married to Daniel for months before she realized that the man had nightmares.

I mean, she should have known. He'd certainly had enough trauma in his life to supply nightmares for a thousand years.

Now, whenever his body goes tense with the waking from a nightmare, she wakes up.

"You ok?" she asks softly.

"Yeah," he says, but she knows that that doesn't mean anything. He always says yes.

"Sarah?" she asks.

He shakes his head.

"It's ok, to be sad that she's a Goa'uld, Daniel. You were in a relationship with her. This is just like Sha're, you're allowed to feel bad about it."

"I'm more selfish than that," he says slowly.

"You're anything but selfish," she says slowly rubbing his arm.

"She knew I was right. For once, one of my colleagues actually knew that all of my theories were right. And then…" he stops.

Janet looks down.

"See? Selfish! I came up with a brilliant idea. I was called crazy for coming up with a brilliant idea. And I still want people to recognize my theory!"

"Someday, they will," Janet says.

He smiles at her, "Cassie was worried I was going to go off with Sarah," he says.

Janet stares at him.

"There wasn't a chance in hell," he tells her.

She smiles at him, and he doesn't miss the relief in her face.

"You're all I need," he tells her.

"Dido."

**Note: I felt like I had to make Sarah and Janet have a super-catty thing go on here. Usually, I don't have women do these things, because in my experience they just don't. But Sarah and Janet are both pretty territorial from what we see. And honestly, who wouldn't fight over Daniel. (I know that I would.)**


	55. Part 5 Chapter 9

**Two Weeks Later**

"The kids get to bed alright?" Daniel asks his wife as she enters the room.

Janet hates it when he does that. Speak automatically, with only a sliver of his brain, without looking up from whatever book he's buried in. She'd rather he ignored her altogether.

"Yeah," she responds. But she knows the response isn't going to break through his automated defenses and get into his brain. She knows the only thing that is going to do that. She gets on the bed behind him, and kisses his neck.

He turns to her with a grin, and kisses her on her lips. She moves closer to him to get a better angle, and in the process her knee gets on a book.

"Whoa!" Daniel exclaims pushing her off.

"And again my husband chooses his books over me. You are a bit hard on a girl's ego, Dr. Jackson," Janet teases moving back.

"These are really old books," he says mournfully, closing them up carefully and putting them away.

"Well, as long as they are _really_ old books," she says sarcastically.

"Maybe I should stop reading in bed, or at least leave my really old books at work," he says as he sets them aside.

"Your wife would not object to either one of those," she says.

"And you now have my full attention," he says.

"Maybe someday, I'll get that without offering you sex," Janet teases.

"Ok, no sex, and you've still got my attention," he says, scraping a tendril of hair away from her head.

"Now is not the best time for sexless focus, it's the best baby-making day of the month," Janet says.

"Wait, what? You're not taking birth control?" Daniel blinks.

Her head jerks back in surprise, "Ah, no… we planned on lots of kids. I guess we never talked about how much spacing we wanted between kids. Do you want to wait a year or something before we have another baby?"

He laughs, a short stifled little thing full of concern, "Are you kidding me? We're not having any more kids."

"We were going to have a few more kids," Janet says.

"That was before the pregnancy from hell that landed you in the hospital more than once, and the depression which followed the kid's birth. Both of which, from what I've read, are likely to be worse with each additional pregnancy."

"So you're saying you regret our son, just became my hormones were a little off after he entered the world," she sneers.

"Your hormones were a hell of a lot more than a 'little off'. I watched my wife go through hell, and I don't really want to do it again," he says with increasing volume.

"So you do then, you regret our son?" she asks.

"No, of course not, but that doesn't mean that our future children should be born in the same way," he says raising her volume just a little above hers.

"So help me if you're suggesting carrying our kid in your own stomach, forget it! The O'Neills might have got out of that one unscathed, but it's just medically nuts. Not to mention the fact that I want to have a baby inside of me?"

"I was talking about adoption. You know, like our daughter, like I wanted to be when I was a kid? What's so wrong with that?" he asks. Their trying to top each other with volume has finally resulted in the noise level growing to a shout.

There is a tentative knock on the door. Daniel closes his eyes in the extra-long blink which is his way of flinching.

"Come on in," Janet says in a voice several decibels down from where she'd been yelling at before.

"Everything ok?" Cassie says, poking her head in.

"Yeah, we're fine, sorry if we kept you up," Janet says.

Cassie's stands at the door, emotions playing on her face. Daniel starts to wonder how much she's heard and whether or not he should address the whole adoption issue. The only thing that stops him is that he had no idea what he could say to make the words lose their venom.

"I don't talk about my birth parents much," Cassie says.

Her parents blink, this is not where she thought the conversation was going.

"They used to fight a lot," she says.

"Cassie, I'm sorry you heard us yelling. We never should have yelled at each other, it's not going to happen again," Daniel says.

"He left," Cassie says.

Daniel stands up, and walks across the room to take his teenage daughter into his arms, "I'm not leaving. It was just a fight."

"I'm sorry, I'm being foolish," Cassie says pulling away, and going back to her room.

"No, Cass, you're not. I want you to keep telling us things, so that we can keep making them better," Janet says.

Cassie gives her family a quick grin right before she disappears back into her room.

Daniel turns back to his wife, "I'm sorry I yelled."

"Yeah, me too, I think we should probably finish this conversation sometime when we're not both tired," Janet says.

"Right," he says laying down on the bed.

"And it wouldn't be terrible to adopt, it's just… it's pretty magical to have a kid inside you, and I really want to do that again."

"I officially declare this subject tabled," he says.

Janet snuggles herself against her husband's chest, and he wraps an arm around her, and presses a kiss onto her forehead.

**A Week Later**

Ty starts a toenail painting extravaganza at at a team/family night for all the kids. Cassie disappeared somewhere in the middle of her second foot. Sam gets up to find her. She's staring out the window. Daniel and Janet are outside, in the cold, and she can tell by the arms waving they're yelling at each other.

Cassie hasn't missed it either.

"Cass," Sam says lightly.

"Emma lived with her dad, right? Before he died?" Cassie says turning her eyes to her. "So on Earth, the kid gets to choose, right? 'Cause on Hanka the kid always went with the mom."

Sam's stomach clenches, "Well, honey, sometimes the kids get to choose, some of the time the judge does."

"I want to go with Daniel," Cassie says with decision.

Sam knows that will destroy Janet. "Honey, are things really that bad?"

"Mom's been depressed for a long time. And then since Christmas it's been this," she waves her hand out the scene, "All the time."

"Honey, you don't need to watch this, go paint your nails," she says.

Cassie obeys, reluctantly. It's like it was back on her planet with the sickness; if the world is going to end, you might as well watch it happen.

The team night is at the Jackson's house, so Sam grabs Daniel's large white sweater from the hanger by the door, and heads outside.*

"Daniel, Jack wanted you to explain again the difference between Upper and Lower dynasties of Egypt," Sam says.

Daniel doesn't buy this, but he's embarrassed enough at being caught yelling at his wife when its ten degrees out that he heads into the house.

"Are you ok, Janet?" Sam asks.

"Yeah," Janet says, trying to follow her husband into the house.

"Really? 'Cause I just had a chat with Cassie, and in her mind, you guys are thumbing through the phone books for divorce lawyers."

"Cassie is overreacting because her birth parents split," Janet says.

"Well, I didn't know that but," Sam makes, Janet turn toward her, "Are you guys ok? I mean, I'm your friend, we could go to drinks and talk about it."

"Yeah, we might have to do that," Janet smiles.

"You're going to be ok," Sam says with a firm nod of her head. She says this because she can't imagine it not being true. She's seen plenty of marriages blow up, but not Daniel and Janet, they're perfect for each other.

Janet is starting to wonder. She's failed at marriage before. Maybe some people just aren't cut out for it.

Daniel is a better man than her first husband, but she's the same person. She's still picking fights, because screaming is better than silence. And she's still lonely. Because in the end, being lonely doesn't have anything to do with proximity, it has to do with your ability to connect to the people in your house.

Maybe she's just broken.

**Two Weeks Later**

"Teal'c, you know that I'm going to be done with college in a couple of months, right?"

"Indeed, I am endeavoring to plan a party for you."

"Oh, that is not necessary," she says quickly.

"On the contrary there is a tradition on Earth which requires the celebration of academic accomplishments."

"I so don't like to be the center of attention, but I didn't bring this up to talk about a party. I just mean, well I've studied my entire life. And when I'm done with school… I'd like to keep studying."

"You want to continue your studies and become a doctor?" Teal'c asks with something in his voice that might be mistaken for excitement.

"No, nurses are the ones who do most of the work. I'm just saying… I want to learn the Goa'uld language, and to fight like a Jaffa."

"These things take years of study."

"Luckily I plan on being married to you for years."

"Mel tek no'meen kree," he says.

"I know you told me to listen, but that's all I got."

"I said, 'perhaps we should begin immediately'. Kree can mean 'now' as much as it can mean 'listen'," he replies.

"How do you say 'ok'?" she asks.

**The Next Day**

There are forms of this Jaffa martial arts, Shelby realizes. There is the semi-serious way of fighting that he does when he is training with an adult Jaffa or a member of his team.

Then there is the lighter way he fights when he is going against his son, where he never looks right at him, which gives his son the ability to use the element of surprise.

And then there is the way he fights with her.

It's like dancing. It's like foreplay.

And she realizes that all the time he's been married to her, there has been some huge part of his Jaffa sexuality missing.

He gave that up for her.

And this whole slapping giant sticks together doesn't do anything for her. But it does for him. And after, when they're in bed together, it's definitely worth the foreplay.

But the fighting does something else for her, something not sexual, but the fighting does make her feel powerful.

She's been abused before, and not just by her current stepfather. By the vast majority of the stream of men her mother had been with over the years. But she knows, if they tried to hit her now, she would be able to defend herself, and that makes her feel a lot more powerful.

It makes her feel safe, knowing that not only would Teal'c never let anyone hurt her again, but neither would she.

There is a music to it, the smacking of their sticks. The movement of their feet, like a dance.

"This is nice," she says. She's always trying to fill the silence with words. And with Teal'c there is a lot of silence.

"Indeed," he says, reminding her once again how few words you need to communicate.

**Two Days Later**

The microwave and the oven are buzzing at once, and Janet's hands are already full. The whole idea of cooking a from-scratch dinner was stupid. When you and your spouse are both working full-time and there is a baby and a teenager involved, edible is enough, really.

"Daniel, can you help me in here?" she asks.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, in a minute," he says, not lifting his head up from the book from the table in the attached dinning room.

Janet decides not to commit murder.

Will is laying on the floor having "belly time" and starts to cry.

Daniel puts the book down, and lays down next to his son on the floor, touching his sides to make the small boy giggle.

-0-0-0-

Daniel chats through dinner, about work, about Cassie's school, about an article he read in a professional journal (Janet's, although she didn't comment on it).

Janet doesn't talk.

Daniel doesn't notice.

Cassie does.

***Yes, I did put Samantha Carter in the ascension sweater.**


	56. Part 5 Chapter 10

Daniel has some ancient tomes spread on their bed. Janet tries to hand him a glass of wine.

"Not around the books," he says, handing it back to her without even looking at it, or her.

She leaves with both glasses of wine and comes back a half hour later, "You're going to get me pregnant again," she says decidedly.

"You don't get to decide that," he says, not even closing his books.

"The hell I don't," she says, "It's my body."

"Yeah, well it's my sperm, so I get a say, too," he says, moving the books onto the safety of his nightstand.

"I want a kid," she says with stubbornness he's never seen in her before. He remembers her first husband. The one that she'd left because he refused to give her a kid.

"We can have a kid. A kid who really need us. A kid who isn't going to make your life miserable for two years."

"Right, the baby is why I'm miserable," Janet says with an eye roll.

And Daniel panics for the first time. "You're miserable?" he asks with real concern. It's the kind of concern he used to show her when they first started dating, and it makes her collapse into tears.

He pulls her into his chest, "God, Janet, we'll have a baby every year, just please don't be miserable."

She laughs, and pulls away from him. "It's not really about kids."

He just looks at her, puzzled.

"You're a really good father," she accuses.

"Ok, your words are nice, the tone… not so much."

"Yes, you're a linguist, so you can figure that out."

"Although I'm apparently clueless about what we've been fighting about for months," he says looking pained.

"Daniel, you remember when we first started dating… all those conversations over wine, I miss that."

"Ok," Daniel says biting his lip.

"I mean, you'll drop anything if the kid needs something, but if it's me?"

He doesn't say a word.

And she's pretty sure she's ended this relationship between them. Fighting about a lie wasn't working, but maybe honesty isn't either.

"I'm sorry, I'm a shitty husband."

"You're not a shitty husband," she says.

"I am, my wife is 'miserable'," he says with a mixture of despair and anger which is particularly hard to take.

"I'm sorry I said that," she says.

"I'm not. Apparently that's the only way to get my attention," he says.

"Ok, how about I do better at telling you when I have a problem before it gets really huge, and you do a better job spending time with me."

"Ok," Daniel agrees.

"And I'm not miserable," she insists.

"So, maybe we could have the wine now?" he asks.

"We could, if I hadn't thrown the bottle at the wall downstairs," she says.

"What?" he says in shock.

"I cleaned it up," she says.

He shakes his head, "Babe, what have I done to you?"

"Orange juice?" she asks.

"It's almost like wine," he agrees, standing up.

He turns when he is almost at the door and looks back at his wife, "We're going to be ok, aren't we? I mean… someday?"

Janet bites her lips. She doesn't want to lie. Not when the truth has just worked out so good for her. "I hope so."

**The Next Day**

Daniel stands at the doorway of the infirmary with his arms crossed in that self-hug. He waits silently until she is done with the patient.

"Lunch?" he asks as nervous as when he asked her on a first date.

They haven't had lunch together since their clandestine meetings at his apartment before they got married, and those didn't actually involve lunch. But she knows this isn't what he means. Sex has never been a problem between them. If they communicated as well with words as they did with their bodies, they wouldn't have anything to worry about.

"You want to go off base?" Daniel asks.

Janet shakes her head. By the time they get through all the security half their time would be gone. "I've got to be back in an hour, the mess is fine."

He nods, and they start walking down the hall next to one another.

"How is your translation going?" she asks.

He pauses, unwilling to answer.

And the cracks have been their relationship for a long time, but he didn't know how deep it was until now. And now, with the glue on the crack is still wet, he's terrified to touch it.

"You're allowed to talk about your work, Daniel," she says.

"I'm just now allowed to do it," he mutters.

She freezes in the hall of the SGC, and says, "Go back to work," in an ice cold voice.

"It's our lunch hour."

"And you'd rather be reading Goa'uld," she says.

"I'm here."

"And I need you to want to be here."

And it sucks that the glue failed and the cracks are still there. And it sucks that they're still fighting. But at least they're fighting about real things now.

And he goes back to his office to substitute coffee for lunch. And she grabs handfuls of chocolate chips out of her desk.

And they go back to work.

**A Week Later**

"Ty wants to go ice-skating," Jack announces, looking at his wife.

"Ok, see you guys later," she says while cooking dinner, with Hannah, who is really too big to be held, on her hip.

"Can you do it?" he asks.

She gives him a "You've got to be kidding look" that only a Carter can pull off.

"I'd take over this," he says, waving his hand before taking his daughter out of her hands.

"I've seen you on the grill, I'm not trusting you on a stove. Besides, I don't know how to skate."

He blinks at her in surprise, "Ok, well can dad take him?"

"You really think dad is the right age to be falling all over the ice?"

Jack sighs, "I don't want to."

"What are you talking about? You love skating."

"I like hockey, Sam, hockey, and I have the feeling that that is not exactly what we're going to be doing here."

"Of course not, he's seven, and it's his first time skating. You're going to be spending all of your time trying to keep him off his bum."

"Sam," he says, rolling his eyes in an effort to shake the image of his son figure skating.

"Jack, take your son skating, and smile when he asks for help with his figure eights."

Jack sighs, and grumbles under his breath as he walks out of the room, but he sounds quite excited when he calls to his son, "Grab your coat, kid. Daddy gets to take you skating, 'cause Mommy's too busy cooking."

-0-0-0-

"Mommy!" Ty says, bursting into the house.

"Did you have fun?" she asks.

"Yep, and I'm a hockey player now," Ty says.

Sam shoots her husband a quick glare over her son's forehead, but says, "You ready for dinner."

"Daddy bought me pizza at the skating ring when we were talking to all the hockey dads."

Sam's eyebrows shot up at little higher at this information.

"You better go take that defrosting bath that we talked about, bud," Jack says, following his son upstairs.

-0-0-0-

"So, Jack, how exactly did you talk our son into playing hockey?"

"I had nothing to do with that," Jack says, his eyes excited with the prospect.

"Right, so he left here a figure skater, and returned as a hockey player, and it has nothing to do with the fact that you were canoodling with the 'hockey dads'."

"That happened after. Look, Sam, I've said for a long time that I am perfectly fine with whatever our son decides to grow up to be. And I'll admit that I wasn't that excited to watch my son do figure eights. But I went there, and I held his hands while he skated backward around the rink. And he looks over at a hockey practice that is going on, and he's fascinated by it. And he stands there and watches. And it's the six-to-nine-year-old team, and the coach comes over and asks if he'd like to join. I think we're probably too late, and they're already in the middle of a season. But it was their first practice. And I think most of the other kids probably know how to skate, but half of the kids are pushing around these miniature walkers, and the other half are falling on their butts. So I go to sign him up. And then we find out that it conflicts with ballet. And I think, well that's it, but he chooses hockey over ballet."

"Probably because you were making that face," she says, glaring at her husband.

"I swear, I did not do anything in front of the kid. When I said that I was ok with whatever he decided to be, I meant it. He doesn't have to make choices to make me happy. But am I happy that my son chose hockey of ballet? Sure, I'll go ahead and admit it."

Sam glares at him.

"But not for the reason you think. I can't help him and Emma practice their plies. I can't sew them their little outfits, at least without getting blood from my fingers all over them. But hockey, I can play that with my son. I can give him advice on how to improve. I can help him gear up if he needs it."

"You can watch them do ballet, that's all you really need to do," Sam protests.

"Right, and that's ok. But Ty and I have less of a connection than I have with the girls, and sharing hockey, that might help us make up some of what we're missing."

"Ty likes you."

"I missed his first three years."

"Yeah, well, you weren't Emma's dad for the first three years either."

"I know, but she had a dad. Ty didn't," Jack says somberly.

"Jack, he's forgiven you for that," she says, wrapping an arm around her husband.

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean that it never happened," he says.

"Ok, you guys can have your boy time, but Ty is still going to help Emma with her ballet sometimes."

"Unless I can get her to play hockey too," he says with an impish grin.

"Jack, you just told me you didn't influence our son!" she says chasing after him, but he's already darted into the room where there girls are sleeping to 'check on them'. He's not afraid of using his children as shields.


	57. Part 5 Chapter 11

**A Week Later**

Daniel walks into the house right behind Cassie. She dumbs her school bag on the floor, and says, "I'm going to call Jennifer."

"Ok, just so long as Jennifer doesn't have a 'y' chromosome," Daniel teases, referencing the incident a few weeks back when Cassie was caught lying about the gender of the person she was calling on the phone.

Cassie gives him a big exaggerated roll of her eyes, and trots upstairs.

"You forget your bag in the car?" Janet asks, looking at her husband's empty hands.

"I'm not going to bring my work home anymore except on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

"Daniel, I don't want to force you into doing something that you don't really want to do," she says softly. She's a little afraid of what her request would mean. That if she asks him to do this and he can't make himself do it, that it might be the end of them. Or that if he can do it, it might mean that she is selfishly asking for something that might endanger the whole world.

"I know, but I was thinking… about why I'm willing to drop anything to be with the kids, and not you. It's because I've been the kid. My parents… they were great, and when they were with me, they were with me. But when they were working… which was most of the time, they were in their own little word. I didn't want my kids to know what that felt like. But just because I've never been ignored by my spouse, doesn't mean that that isn't just as serious a problem. And I'm sorry if you ever had to go through that. It was never because you were less important to me than the kids were. That is anything from the truth. I love you so much, I couldn't love you any more if I tried," he says.

"And I'm going to try a lot harder to communicate well. I'll try to scream at you what I really mean instead of something else," she says, smiling.

Daniel grins at her, and pulls her into a hug. Just then the baby starts crying. He pulls away, and looks at his wife apologetically. "It's ok, you go get the baby, and I'll go get supper. You don't actually have to pay attention to me all the time."

He gives her a quick kiss, which feels intensely intimate for not reason in particular.

-0-0-0-

Janet grabs her dishes and stacks Cassie's on top before she brings them over to the sink.

Daniel follows after her with his own dishes, which he puts in the dishwasher. That probably would have been enough for her, but he doesn't stop there. He takes the tray off his son's highchair, and takes it over.

"You don't need to," she says quietly.

"I know, but I want to," he says.

She grins, and grabs Will, "Ok, then I'll give him a bath and get him to sleep."

"I'll check Cassie's homework, and we'll meet up for wine?" he asks.

He starts doing dishes, but turns when he notices that Cassie hasn't moved yet.

"Are you ok, honey?" he asks.

"Will you take me with you, Dad?" she asks.

"Take you where?" he asks, turning to her with a befuddled look on her face.

"When you leave her, will you take me?"

"Cassie, your mother and I are not fighting anymore."

"I know, it got really quiet right before my first dad left, too."

"Well, this is different. This time it got really quiet because we're working things out. I'm not going to lie to you and say that everything is fine just now. But we're working it out," he says, drying the tray. He snaps it back into place, and sits down in front of his daughter. "I'm not going anywhere, and don't you ever tell your mother that you choose me over her, because that would break her heart."

"What's wrong then? What do you have to work through?" Cassie asks.

"Honey, it's just stuff between your mother and me, but it will be fine," he says, "Now let's see that homework."

-0-0-0-

Janet comes down stairs almost an hour later to see her husband chatting with her daughter. He's got a bottle of wine opened, and two glasses next to them.

"Well, I better get out of your way," Cassie says.

"Honey, you can stay," Janet says.

"Right, like I really want to intrude on my parents' date."

**One Month Later**

"Are you sure you don't want to go to the museum?" Daniel asks Cassie as he gathers his bag of research and a cup of coffee.

"So you're asking if I want to spend my Saturday driving for hours to a museum that I've already been to, with my dad?" Cassie asks with a roll of her eyes.

"So that's a yes?" he asks with a big fake smile on his face.

"That's a no," she says, "I'm going to spend the Saturday at the mall."

"With?" he asks with an eyebrow raise.

"With friends."

"Which friends?"

"I already told mom," she says, rolling her eyes.

"Ok, I'll see you later," Daniel says, moving forward to kiss his daughter. She tries to flinch away from him, and he walks away without kissing her. He tries not to take it personally - it is after all only teenagers being teenagers - but it still hurts him when his daughter shies away from signs of affection.

-0-0-0-

Daniel is early. He's always early. So he take the time to walk through the exhibit before he goes behind the scenes to examine the artifact which may or may not be Goa'uld related.

It's not like he hasn't seen the exhibit before. It's the closest mummy to the place that he's lived for four years. But he likes to people-watch. He love to see the moment when people discover the wonders of Egypt for the first time.

So he stands against the wall, and watches the usual Saturday museum goers. Families with small children in strollers, families with older children trying to get their children to slow down enough to read the signs, and a smattering of older couples holing each other's hands.

And then there is the little girl. She is about seven years old, and she's by herself. When she first walks into the room she walks over to the models of the Egyptian heads. She gives them a nod like she's known them for a long time, like she shares a secret with them.

Then she sit down like she's contemplating something, but she doesn't read a single sign.

He sits down next to her.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi," she responds, not looking at him, but smiling absently.

"Are you here alone?" he asks.

"Of course not, my family is just so slow," she says, with an exaggerated eye roll.

"Really? 'Cause I plan on being here all day," he says. It's not a lie. He does plan on spending the day at the museum, although he doesn't exactly plan on spending it in this room.

She makes a face, "Are you going to rat me out?"

"I'm going to be a responsible adult."

"What does that mean?" she asks.

"I don't know yet," he says, looking at her carefully.

"I'm Claudia, and I ran away from home," she says.

"And I suppose your brother Jamie is with Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler," Daniel says with a smile.

"You've read that one?" she asks.

"I have read it, but I haven't lived it," he says carefully.

"I don't have a brother," she admits.

"What are you running from, honey?" he asks with such real concern.

"Nothing," she says with a sigh.

"Nothing? You just ran away from home for no reason?" Daniel asks skeptically.

"I know I should have a reason. Like my parents beat me or neglected me or just don't see me like Matilda's parents. But none of that is true."

"You like books?" he asks.

She nods her head.

"Yeah, my kids like books too. My wife and I adopted a teenager, and we've got a little boy," he says.

Her shoulders relax a little at his words, but she doesn't add to them.

"Honey, you have to go home to your parents. I'm sure they're worried about you," he says softly.

She shakes her head.

"Honey, if one of my kids was missing for a second, I'd fall apart," he says.

"I know. I go to my friend's house, and see that there are parents like that, and… it makes it worse," she says.

He looks away from her a bit.

"When I was eight years old, I was in a museum just like this with my parents. I was acting like a baby, trying to get their attention. But they were busy working - my dad was an Egyptologist and my mom was a linguist," he says.

"That was a short story," she says, knowing that he's leaving something out, although she doesn't know what or why.

"They died. A stupid accident. The point is, I would do anything to spend more time with them, even if they weren't perfect parents."

"So you're telling me to go make nice with my parents, because they are going to die?" the girl says in shock.

"Yeah, they're going to be dead someday, and you're going to miss the fights, and the silence, and the scolding, and all the things you think you hate. And you are really going to miss all the tuck-ins, and I love yous and the snuggles."

"I do," she says with a tear slowly crawling down her face.

He looks at her quizzically.

"My parents died. A couple of months ago. I've lived in a group home since then."

"So that's what you meant about no-one noticing if you're gone," he says softly. "I was lucky enough to be in foster homes most of the time."

She nods her head.

"Honey, how long have you been on your own?" he knew the way that she looked at the mummy that it was old news for her. This can't be her first day in the museum.

"Five days," she says.

He pulls a granola bar out of his bag, and hands it to her.

She looks at him in surprise.

He shrugs, "I'm a dad; we don't go anywhere without food."

She takes it gratefully, and as she chews he says, "You know that my wife and I are foster parents. I can't make you any promises, but if you come with me, I can ask the social worker to place you with us."

"I wouldn't have to go back to the group home?" she asks.

"I hope not," he says with a smile.

He reaches into her bag, and hands her a water bottle. She smiles gratefully, and twists it open.

"With all the book heroines that you know, have you heard of Constance Contraire?"*

The girl shakes her head.

"She's a smart, little, stubborn girl who runs away from home and lives in a library."

"A library; that's almost as good as a museum," the girl says.

"Yeah, and then she gets adopted by a good family," he says, knocking her shoulder.

"Sounds like a good book," the girl says.

"Maybe I'll get the change to read it to you. What's your name?"

"Olivia Faery."

He gives her a skeptical look.

"Really!" she exclaims.

"It's very fair tale," he says.

"Well, what's your name?" she challenges.

"Daniel Jackson."

"It's very owlish."

He laughs. "Ok, I am supposed to do some research here today. I'm going to talk to them for a second, and tell them I can't, and then I'm going to call a social worker. Do you know the name of yours?"

"I don't remember," Olivia says feeling foolish.

"It's ok, I'll call the one we worked with when I adopted my daughter, and I'm sure she'll know the way to contact yours. You stay here, ok?" he asks nervously.

She nods her head, and somehow, he knows that he can trust her.

-0-0-0-

Janet walks into the living room when she hears the door open. Her eyes flow from her husband to the little girl at his side.

"Olivia, this is my wife Janet, and our son William," he says, taking the boy out of his wife's arms. "Daddy loves you," he tells the boy as William drops a sloppy kiss on his neck.

He places the boy on the floor. "Janet, can I talk to you real quick in the kitchen?"

Janet nods.

"Can you make sure Will doesn't put anything in his mouth while we're gone, honey?" Janet asks.

"Sure," Olivia agrees.

-0-0-0-

"Ok, I know this is probably opening up a whole can of worms. I swear that I didn't go out this morning looking for a kid to adopt. But she ran away from her group home, and me saying we would be her foster parents was kind of crucial to her not living in the museum anymore. And I swear, if you consider adopting her, we can have a baby later," he blurts right away.

"Sweetie, we talked about adopting again. I haven't really met her yet, but there is a good chance you've just brought home a new family member."

"Yeah? And you're not mad?" he asks.

She shakes her head. "Ok, let me go meet my daughter."

Daniel grins.

She understands that her accepting this girl, this girl that she's barely met, is a roundabout way of accepting him. Accepting the part of her husband that was still a lost little boy waiting for someone to love him, unconditionally.

***The Mysterious Benedict Society wouldn't have been out when this story is set. But my dear little Olivia is going to need this heroine's strength.**


	58. Part 5 Chapter 12

**Two Days Later**

Teal'c walks into the apartment, and suddenly quickens his pace up to Shelby. He takes her into his arms, and kisses her. Then Teal'c picks her up, and spins her around the room.

"Did you have a good day at work?" she giggles.

"It would have been better if you had called me with our joyous news."

"What news?" she asks.

"Did you not want me to mention it in front of your sisters," he whispers, putting his hand on her stomach.

"I'd kind of like you to mention it in front of me," she says back.

"The child which grows within you," he says.

"I'm pregnant?" she says.

"How did you not know that?" he asks.

"Well, it's not like you get a memo or something," she giggles.

"Did you not sense its heart?" he asks.

"Ah… no, you did?" she asks, with an expression he hasn't learned to read yet on her face. An expression which clearly means he's full of crap.

"Indeed."

"And do you always sense heart beats?" Shelby asks.

"Of course," he says, blinking.

"And why did you never mention this before?"

"I didn't mention the fact that I could see or hear, either," Tea'c replies.

"Yeah, well those are normal human things."

"Humans do not sense heartbeats?" he says in shock.

"No, like you feel it all the time? Like right now?"

"Your heartbeat has increased in speed."

"Yeah, well, I just found out that my husband has superpowers."

"How do you predict attacks when you cannot hear the pounding of your opponents' heart?" Teal'c asks quizzically.

"Does Jack know that you can hear heartbeats?"

"I did not realize that it was a special skill of any kind."

"Your commanding officer has to know about this. Does it work with other animals too? Is it just humans, or is it any living creature?"

"I can sense any creature with a vascular system, but it can only be done at a distance when the creature is similar to a Jaffa," Teal'c says.

"What is a Jaffa?" Tammy says. Becky Lynn kicks her sister. She knows that she has a better chance of getting new information out of her guardian when he thinks they already know what he is telling them.

"A Jaffa is someone that comes from the tribe Teal'c came from," Shelby says.

"It is not, it's the kind of alien he is," Becky Lynn says.

"What?" Shelby practically shouts at her husband in disbelief. She's pretty sure right now that her husband spilled the beans.

Teal'c gives her a look.

"I knew it!" Becky Lynn says.

"Crap," Shelby says, realizing that she is, in fact, the one who spilled the beans.

"I want it noted that I was not the person who reveled this information," Teal'c says.

"No way," Tammy says.

"Sweetie," Shelby says, reaching for the girl.

"He's human!" Tammy says.

"Yes, honey, he is human, and he's also an alien," Shelby says.

"How?" Tammy says.

"That's why his skin is a different color," Becky Lynn offers.

"I just thought he was black!" Tammy says.

"He's not black, he's brownish gold," Becky Lynn tells her sister.

"I'm not talking about his color, I'm talking about his race."

"Yeah, well his race is Jaffa," Becky Lynn says with an overdramatic eye roll.

"Teal'c, are you sure we're having a baby?" Shelby says, having forgotten the good bit of information in the confusion.

He nods his head.

Shelby grins.

"Can we name it Flower?" Becky Lynn asks.

"It's a little early to be discussing names," Shelby says, "And it could be a boy."

"If it's a boy, you could still name it Flower."*

"We will be selecting a name for my son which denotes power and strength," Teal'c says with a look of scorn.

"Ah… Teal'c, are you, like, sure about the boy thing? You can sense gender as well as heart beats?" Shelby asks.

"I am uncertain about the gender. Although male hearts tend to beat a little slower, and this heart beat is as slow as Rya'ac's was."

"I have a son," Shelby says.

"And I have an alien for a brother-in-law," Becky Lynn says with the same amount of awe and enthusiasm that her sister had about the baby.

**The Next Day**

"You have become ill," Teal'c says.

"Helpful," Shelby says, pulling away from the toilet.

"Who exposed you to the germs which has caused you to become ill?"

"Germs? Are you kidding? This is because of the baby!" Shelby informs her.

"The baby is ill?" Teal'c says with concern.

"No, this is just morning sickness."

"Here is another Earth term I am unfamiliar with."

"Morning sickness is like when a pregnant women throws up," Shelby says.

"Why does the child make you throw up in the morning?"

"It's not just in the morning," Shelby says, standing up and nudging her husband out of the way to get to the sink to clean her mouth.

"This is unacceptable that our baby has caused you to feel ill," he says with concern still in his voice.

"It's normal, Teal'c."

"Jaffa women do not have to endure this phenomenon."

"Yeah, well, I'm not a Jaffa," he says.

"It is possible for a human to become a Jaffa."

"Really?" she says spinning around to face him, "Sickness happens. People get colds, and the flu, and morning sickness, and they survive. And it's all ok. You don't need a nuclear solution to a tiny problem!"

"I do not wish you to be ill," Teal'c says fiercely.

"Well, I appreciate that, but illness isn't that bad."

"Does it not cause you to have discomfort?"

"Right, but it also causes you to have sick days in front of the TV. And when you've had a long sickness and you wake up, and you feel good. And you've never felt so alive in your entire life. And carrying a baby into the world is magical, even if it makes me sick."

"I do not remember these feelings from before my prim'ta."

"Being sick is part of being human," she says looking at her husband's eyes.

"I am not human," Teal'c reminds her.

The two of them look at each other for a long time.

"Do you ever wish that I was human?" Teal'c asks.

She stares at him. "Do you?"

"Sometimes I wish that I could be mortal. That we could grow old together. That I could lie beside you all night, and lose consciousness. Sometimes I wish I knew what you meant when you talked about a dream. I wish to have dreams with you in them."

Shelby starts to cry.

"Have I made you sad?" he says concerned.

"Happy tears."

"I will never understand humans."

"Do you know what I hate about you not being a human?"

"My symbiot?" he asks.

"The fact that whenever I let you hold me all night, I feel guilty that you are getting bored," she says.

"I never grow bored of you," Teal'c says, gently touching her face. "But I am sure you wish that I did not have a symbiot."

"I don't know, Junior is kind of growing on me," she says, putting her hand on his stomach.

"I am much more fond of the Junior which you are growing within you," he says, touching her stomach.

"You and me both," she giggles.

"And I am sure you do not like the way my skin has a metallic glow."

"Actually, I love it. It adds to the lovely sculpted thing that you have going on," she says running her hands over his shoulders and biceps. "Sometimes I wish that you had not lived so long before I came along."

"I wish that I could let you see though my eyes. The planets that I have seen, the solar systems that I have visited."

"I wish that too," she says.

There is a long pause, "Someday, when Ry'ac has grown, I will use my leave to show the universe to you, instead of us visiting my son," he says.

"Yeah, when Ry'ac is grown, we're still going to want to visit him. And we will have this baby, and my sisters."

"We could take them."

"You want to go traveling around the universe with three kids?" she says.

"Indeed," he says leaning forward to kiss her.

She pulls away conscious of the fact that she just threw up, "Well, I'm not sure the Air Force is going to authorize us for joy rides."

"Shelby, I forgot to do my math!" Tammy calls.

"Again? Seriously?" Shelby mutters, says heading out of the closet.

"Can you make me my tart, Teal'c?" Becky Lynn says.

"You should really teach her to make her own pop tart; it's a toaster, and she's six."

"I enjoy taking care of her," Teal'c says.

"And that is why you are the perfect man."

*I had a cousin who was five when her brother was born, and she really wanted to name him Flower. Actually when he was like twelve, she would call him that whenever he annoyed her.


	59. Part 5 Chapter 13

**Spoilers for "The Light"**

**One Week Later**

Becky Lynn lifts up her sister's shirt to blow a raspberry on her belly. Her sister giggles in glee while pushing her away at the same time. Teal'c is sitting on the floor next to the girls, absorbing the contents of the morning paper. Becky turns to Teal'c and lifts his shirt to blow on his belly. Instead, she just stops and stares.

"What's wrong with your belly?" she asks.

Tammy turns to look at it too, "Did you have surgery?"

Teal'c looks to her wife, hoping she is going to be able to come up with one heck of a cover story.

"It's a tribal marking," Shelby says.

"Why did you let them cut your stomach up?" Becky Lynn asks, concerned.

"It would greatly increase my lifespan," Teal'c replies.

"Superstitious nonsense," Tammy mutters.

"Did it hurt?" Becky Lynn asks.

"Indeed," Teal'c says.

"More than this?" Tammy asks, touching the insignia on his head.

"The insignia in molten gold caused more pain," Teal'c says, after considering.

"How come your insides don't fall out?" Becky Lynn asks.

"This opening is a pouch that is disconnected from my internal organs," Teal'c explains.

"Do you carry anything in it?" Tammy asks.

"No," Shelby says quickly, not giving her husband a chance to screw up that answer. She really doesn't want her sister's to be traumatized by the knowledge of what her husband actually carries in her belly.

"Do you want to carry my dolly in it like a kangaroo?" Becky Lynn asks.

"I would not," Teal'c replies.

"What does it mean?" Becky Lynn asks, touching his forehead emblem.

"It is a symbol from my country," he replies, talking without giving any information.

"A symbol for what?" Tammy asks.

"My previous employment involved the service of an evil dictator, this is his symbol," he replies.

"But you don't serve the bad man anymore?" Becky Lynn asks.

Teal'c shakes his head.

"Is it real gold?" Tammy asks.

"Indeed," Teal'c says.

"You should take it off your head and sell it, then," Becky Lynn offers.

"That would hurt too much," Shelby says, sitting on the floor with her family.

"Don't do it then," Becky Lynn says, shaking her head quickly.

"Listen girls, you can't tell anyone about Teal'c's belly hole," Shelby says.

"'Kay. Teal'c, can we play horsey?" Becky Lynn asks.

He goes onto his hands and knees, and Becky Lynn climbs on.

**One Week Later**

"I have brought you a graduation gift," Teal'c says as Shelby walks out of her graduation.

"Ok," Shelby says warily.

"It's a car," he says.

"A car, you bought me a car?" she says.

"Indeed," he says.

"But we're going to share it, right?" she asks.

"We will be working at the same place," he says. "Sharing transportation should not be difficult."

"Well, thank you," she says.

Teal'c pauses, "I have an apology to make."

"Ok…" she says warily.

"I was unable to stop your graduation party from occurring," he reports.

"Teal'c…." she whines.

"I did, however, manage to stop Jack from ordering the clowns and a house of bounce," he says.

"Well, thank you for that. Where is this party?"

"We secured a room at a restaurant."

"Well, let's drive my new car there."

-0-0-0-

"Nurse!" Jack says as soon as he sees her coming.

"I haven't taken my test yet, Jack, I'm not actually a nurse."

"Congratulations," Daniel says, stepping forward to give her a hug.

"I'm going to love having you be able to do nursing tasks at work," Janet says.

"Kids, come congratulate your Auntie Shelby," Jack says. And the next second she is completely surrounded by kids, two of whom were her own sisters.

"Shelby," her mother, says coming up behind the kids.

"Ah… hi, mom," she says awkwardly. Somehow she hadn't expected her mother to be here.

"I'm proud of you, Shel," she says with emotion in her voice.

"Thanks, mom," Shelby says. She searches back in her mind trying to figure out if her mother has ever said that to her before. She decides that she hasn't.

"I can't believe you graduated, you're the first one in our family that ever graduated," Becky Lynn states dramatically.

"But I'm not going to be the last. You're going to graduate from college too," Shelby says.

"What am I going to be?" Becky Lynn asks.

"Whatever you want to be. It's a great big universe," Shelby says.

**One Week Later**

"Where is Daniel?" Olivia asks.

"He's stuck at work for a bit," Janet says, trying to give a disarming smile.

"What? What happened?" Cassie asks, panicked.

"He's fine," Janet assures her eldest daughter, putting a hand on her arm.

"But he's in Canada, right?" Cassie asks.

"Yeah, he's traveling for business," she says, mostly for Olivia's benefit. Then for Cassie's, she says, "But he's in a really safe part of Canada. He's stuck there, but he's fine."

"How long is he going to be gone for?" Olivia asks.

"Probably a month," Janet says.

"A month?" Olivia says.

"I don't suppose we can call him, can we?" Cassie asks softly.

Right now Janet realizes that Olivia not knowing about the Stargate sucks a lot more than she originally thought. It means that Olivia can't talk to her father, even when Cassie, who knows about what her Dad really does for a living, can.

"No, honey, but you can send an e-mail," Janet says.

"But he's just at work, he didn't like leave for good or something, did he?" Olivia asks.

"Nope, he'd never do that," Janet says, wiping tendrils of hair from her face.

-0-0-0-

"Mom, do you have a minute?" Cassie asks, coming into her mother's room later that night.

Janet has just finished feeding Will, and is holding him while he sleeps. "Sure, honey, just let me put your brother down," she says. She leaves the room to lay the baby down in the crib. A few minutes later, she returns, and sits down on the bed next to her daughter.

"Can you tell me what really happened to Dad?"

"Of course, hon, he went to another planet. There was this light source there, and something else… we're really not quite sure what, that made them addicted to the planet. For a while, it looked like he might have to stay. But now we figured out a way to get him out safely. They just need to turn it down slowly. He's going to be fine."

"You're not telling me everything," Cassie says, examining her mother's face noticing deep concern hiding in the corners.

"Let's just stick with the headlines," she says sadly.

"Mom, I'm not a little kid anymore."

"Oh, Cass, the very fact that you think that proves how little you still are."

Cassie makes a face at her.

"Honey, the withdrawal got pretty bad. I thought… I might lose him. And there was nothing that I could do about it. But he pulled through."

"You saved him, didn't you?" Cassie asks with a smile.

"This time, it was Colonel O'Neill that saved him," Janet says, putting her arm the girl. "Are you ok?"

"Yeah," Cassie says, nodding her head. She figures that if she shows any emotion, her mother is going to be a lot less willing to share things in the future.

"That's great, but I'm less than ok. I miss my husband."

"A month," Cassie says despondently.

"That's shorter than forever."

"It is," Cassie says sadly.

**The Next Day**

Olivia is standing on a chair, reaching to put away a dish.

"Honey, you don't have to do this," Janet says, coming up behind her to help her put it away.

Olivia turns toward her mother, still standing on the chair. "Did Daniel leave because of me?"

"Of course not, honey; he's just gone on business."

"But when people leave on business, they know they're going in advance. No-one leaves on a surprise business trip," Olivia says.

Janet picks the girl up by the armpits, and lifts her onto the floor, "You do when you are in Daniel's line of work."

"What does he do, anyway?" Olivia asks.

Janet isn't quite sure how to answer the question. With the rest of SG-1, it's easy. They are in the Air Force, or are scientists, or are doctors. But Daniel doesn't actually do the things he was trained for.

"He does a lot of things. He went to school to be an anthropologist, and an archeologist, and a linguist. But mostly he works as a translator and a diplomat."

"I don't know what any of those words mean. Can you just tell me what he does when he goes to work every day?"

"Well, he takes things that are written in a different language, and he puts them into a language that everyone can understand. And a lot of the time, he helps people get along with each other."

"So he's off helping people make friends?" Olivia asks.

"Well, not exactly. He was helping people make friends, and then he got stuck."

"How did he get stuck?"

"Ah… that's complicated."

"Like in quicksand?"

"No," Janet says, trying to keep it as short as she can, because that would make her less likely to have to lie.

"Cassie looks worried."

"She's fine now."

"But Cassie knows what you guys really do."

"Yeah, she does."

"Right, it's ok," Olivia says quickly.

"Honey, the only reason that Cassie knows what we do for a living is that we met her while we were doing it. This has nothing to do with her being adopted already."

"But if I was really your daughter, I could know?" she asks.

Janet sighs, "Honey, I don't know for sure. You'd certainly have to sign some non-disclosure documents. And I'm not sure if they'd clear you to know, you're young still."


	60. Part 5 Chapter 14

**The Next Day**

Olivia wafts through a yellowed copy of a Nancy Drew novel. She's familiar enough with it that she can find all of the good parts without really looking.

She puts it down, and picks up Sherlock Holmes. She runs her fingers down the table of contents, and the memories it jogs give her strength.

Then she touches base with Ms. Marple.

Then she stands up, and takes a deep breath trying to talk herself into the plan. She'd decided to do it a long time ago, but now that the moment has begun, she's scared.

"What if they catch me and send me back?" she whispers to herself. But a mixture of the excitement of adventure and the need to connect with this part of her parents drives her on.

She heads out of her bedroom, and creeps down the stairs. Janet has already read Olivia a bedtime story, and is now watching TV in her bedroom. Cassie is doing homework in the living room.

"Need something, Olivia?"

"No, I'm just going to, ah… look in the basement," Olivia says.

"Need help?"

"No, I'm just exploring," she says, holding a flashlight.

"Sometimes I wish I could be a kid again," Cassie says with a smile, "Even the basement is exciting."

Olivia finds the organization scheme of the basement pretty quickly. The center of the room is cluttered with toys and clothes that Cassie and Will have already cast off, and things that Janet has bought at yard sales and thrift sales for her family when they get a little bigger. Olivia's heart clenches when she realizes that the purple velvet dress is obviously meant for her to grow into in a Christmas or two. She longs for permanence, even though she knows that Daniel and Janet can't give it to her yet. It's comforting to know that they want it as badly as she does.

Janet has the Christmas decorations and the keepsakes from her childhood all stacked in one side of the room. Daniel doesn't seem to have any keepsakes.

But he does have notebooks. Boxes and boxes of notebooks.

She picks one out of a box at random.

It's labeled "P3X-797". She flips through it and is bored by the drawings and numbers in the first couple of pages. She is about to put it down, when something catches her eye.

"This planet…"

"No way," she mutter.

She keeps scanning through the notebook until she is familiar with the whole story. She picks up the next notebook that includes another story of planets. She becomes so engrossed in the stories that she doesn't return to her room until just before dawn. It's a Saturday morning, so she figures that this doesn't matter.

**The Next Day**

"You seem really tired today, are you ok?" Janet asks softly.

"Yeah, I just didn't get much sleep last night," Olivia admits in the middle of a yawn.

"Did you have nightmares? You know that you can come into my room anytime that you feel like you need to, right?"

"It wasn't nightmares."

"Why don't you go take a nap after breakfast?"

"Ok, but can you ask you one question first?"

"Of course, honey?"

"What is the alphanumeric designation of the planet Daniel is stuck on?"

Janet pauses with a spoonful of oatmeal halfway to her mouth. "What are you talking about?"

"I found Daniel's notebooks in the basement."

"And you stayed up all night reading them, too, didn't you?" Cassie asks with a giggle.

"So you found the science fiction Daniel writes," Janet says with artificial calm.

Olivia looks at her for a second, trying to figure out if that's the truth, "Cassie was in there. This Goold thing wiped out her whole planet, an almost made her heart explode."

Janet blinks.

"The notebook didn't explain _how_ you get to other planets."

"I don't," Janet says.

"That's right; usually, anyway. But Daniel does. How?"

"Honey, I can't tell you," Janet says at the same time that Cassie says, "The Stargate."

Janet gives her a glare.

"Mom, she's my sister, and she needs to know."

"Ok, but Olivia, you can never tell anyone about this. You see, in Egypt in 1928…"

**One Month Later**

"The arrangement of the refrigerator is completely unacceptable," Teal'c says, staring into it.

"Ok, what is unacceptable about it?" she asks.

"The bovine lactose curdled with bacteria is in the immediate proximity of my hamburgers."

"Ok, if you're going to use gross words for my yogurt, I'm going to use gross words for your precious hamburgers. They are the ground carcasses of a bovine."

"The carcasses of dead animals provide strength that a warrior needs. It should not be tarnished by its proximity to bacteria."

"There are millions of bacteria all over your skin, you are always in close proximity to bacteria."

He reaches into the fridge and moves her yogurt with a careless gesture.

"Teal'c, it's my fridge too, and I don't want my yogurt that close to the back. It's going to freeze."

"Is not frozen yogurt a delicacy of your planet?"

"Yes, but freezing yogurt doesn't actually make frozen yogurt."

"I do not understand why words in your language do not derive their meaning from their parts," he complains.

She reaches past him to move the yogurt back to the middle, right next to the hamburgers she made him yesterday.

"You will move that objectionable food away, woman."

"Woman?" she says, her eyebrows shooting up, "Did you really just call me 'woman'?"

"I am absolutely certain that is your gender," he replies with the tiny centimeter quirk in his lips he says when he makes a joke.

It's enough to cut the tension, and they both burst into laughter.

-0-0-0-

"Do I have to go to school today?" Olivia asks as she digs into her waffle.

"Of course you do, why wouldn't you go to school?" Janet asks.

"Daniel is coming home today," Olivia says, as if it was completely obvious.

"You'll see him when he gets home from school."

"But if I don't go to school, I will be able to see him a whole lot sooner," Olivia says.

"School is really important," Janet says.

Cassie rolls her eyes, "Come on, mom, we haven't seen Dad in a month. It's just one day of school."

Janet looks at the girls, "He won't be in until 12:30. I'll pick you up right after lunch."

"Mom, it's turkey surprise day at school today. Is it possible that you are going to pick me up before lunch?"

"Ok, girls," Janet says, reluctantly.

-0-0-0-

"Where is Janet?" Daniel says, looking around, confused as he steps through the Stargate.

"She and the girls are waiting for you topside. I wouldn't clear her to bring Olivia down here, since she doesn't know about the Stargate," General Hammond says.

"She brought the girls to see me? Is it a day off school or something?"

"I think a father coming back after this long an absence justifies a half day of school, don't you?" General Hammond says.

"They were really that desperate to see me?" Daniel asks, completely stunned.

"In case you haven't noticed, you're pretty well-liked around here, son," General Hammond says, giving him a pat on the back that is so firm that it almost takes his air away.

And for the first time, Daniel starts to believe that he really is important. That there are people in the world to whom he is just as important as they are to him. People that could not live without him. People that had been missing him with a terrible ache in their stomach that probably felt a lot like the terrible ache that had been in his stomach ever since he first went missing.

People love him. People with good taste. So maybe, he is worthy of love.

-0-0-0-

"Daniel!" Olivia shouts, jumping into his arms. He holds her up with one arm, while scooping the others into a hug.

"I missed you guys. It killed me to be able to only talk to you by phone or e-mail," he says, nuzzling the younger girl.

"I'm not supposed to know that you were on a different planet, that's why I couldn't talk to you through the wormhole like Janet and Cassie could."

"Hey, William can't either," Cassie says, comforting her little sister.

"Wait… wormhole?" Daniel says, setting Olivia down so he can look at her. He ushers his family farther away from the guard tower, and glares at his wife, "Why exactly did you let classified information drop?"

"I think we can blame the person who wrote a whole bunch of classified information down in a notebook and left it in the basement."

"Oh," Daniel says, staring at the little girl before him.

"You didn't want me to know?" Olivia asks, wounded. Janet bought her the dress to grow into. She caught Janet talking about making the adoption final. Daniel hasn't really done anything to make her believe that this is going to be forever.

Daniel bends down with his knee touching the sidewalk, "I didn't want you to know because I didn't want you to worry about me. There are some scary things in that notebook."

Olivia nods her head, "The snake, does Teal'c really have one of them in his stomach?"

Daniel smiles, "Yeah, he does, but he's not going to let it hurt anyone."

"But every time you go through the gate, they could hurt you."

"But I'm going to try not to let that happen," Daniel says.

"Janet called the social workers and told them I could stay, but she didn't ask you," Olivia tells him suddenly. She has to know how open he is to this being long-term.

Daniel looks up at his wife, "Actually, Livvy-Lou, she did ask me when they got to talk to me through the wormhole, but she didn't need to ask me. You're my daughter now."

A warm feeling bubbles up in Olivia's chest until it comes out as a sigh. Daniel picks her up again.

"I'm too big to carry!" the seven-year old protests.

"I missed you!" he responds as if that explains everything, and refuses to put her down.


	61. End Part 5

**One Week Later**

Shelby is sitting on the deck of her apartment, studying for her nursing exam as she waits for her husband to come home. Officer Pete Shanahan is driving by, and catches sight of the women that's he's worried about ever since he met her in the police station months ago.

He's off duty, so he pulls over, and walks over so he's standing under her second story window.

"Is there a problem, officer?" Shelby asks, bristling at authority. Dealing with authority has always ended badly for her.

"No, I was just checking in on you," he says, not missing her negative reaction, and assuming it was due to his gender and not to his job.

It's only then that she remembers him then from the night when Teal'c got arrested, "I'm fine."

"Are you still with your husband?"

"Yeah," she says gruffly.

"Should you be?"

"I don't think it's none of your business."

"Has he… hurt you again?"

"He didn't hurt me at all. Like I told you people, it was my step-dad did, and I'm not around him anymore."

"I just… I've just worried about you," the man admits.

Shelby smiles, "Well, that's nice of you. Unnecessary in my case, but nice." She thinks of all the social workers, and police men, and teachers, and how much she resented them poking their noses into her businesses. But this is the first time that she's ever felt that these people really cared. That they were looking into her situation because it was a horrible situation, and they wanted to help her get out of it, "Do you want some tea?"

"Sure," he says.

-0-0-0-

It's a rough day. One of those days where SG-1 escapes from a herd of al-keshs and a stream of Jaffa. They barely make it out of there alive.

And Teal'c is ready to come home to his wife. He needs a hug, even though Jaffa don't ask for hugs. He needs a back massage that feels like the magic fingers that he discovered at the hotel that he and Jack visited a few years back.

And he walks in, and his wife is having tea, and touching the hand of some man.

Teal'c just walks in and towers over the man.

"Teal'c, this is Pete."

Teal'c nods.

"This is my husband, Teal'c," Shelby says, severely annoyed that her husband is doing nothing to alleviate Pete's worry about him abusing her. "Do you want me to get you something?" Shelby asks, not even noticing that this makes her sound more like a domestic servant than a wife.

"I consumed a meal with my teammates while on a mission," he says.

"Ok, how was your day?" she asks, hoping that her husband will unfreeze so that the police officer's suspicions will go away.

"I cannot discuss the specifics of my day in the presence of people who have not signed a non-disclosure agreement."

"I was really just looking for a 'good' or a 'bad'," she says.

"The day did not go well. Would you like to join me in the practice of martial arts?" Teal'c asks.

"I have company," Shelby says, looking in shock at her husband, and turning to give a smile to Pete.

"Indeed," Teal'c says leaving the room.

"I should go," Pete says.

"No, it's ok, we were having a good conversation," Shelby says quickly.

Pete stands, and puts a business card in her hand, "Listen, if you ever need me," he mutters.

"Thanks, but I won't," she says as she walks Pete out onto the porch. Once she's seen him to the car, she goes into the living room. She picks up a stick from the wall, and begins to spar with her husband.

"We really need to get a bigger place. One were we can swing a stick around without having to worry about hitting anything."

"The police man left you a number with which to reach him," Teal'c says, making a hit with more force than is strictly necessary.

"Well, yeah, but it's just if I needed to call the police for something."

"Phone numbers are a courting ritual in this country. And the number to locate the police is known to every child."

"Trust me Teal'c, it is not a courting ritual," she says, taking a step back to avoid his extra-forceful blows.

"You were sharing a beverage with him."

"Well, I would be sharing a beverage with my husband if he drank something besides water."

"Are you implying that I have caused you to be unfaithful, because I will not drink bovine lactose, beverages steeped in plants, or with bacteria growing on it?"

"I'm not being unfaithful."

"He touched your hand," Teal'c replies, using a Jaffa martial arts move that he's never taught Shelby.

She avoids it by taking several quick steps back.

"I'm not cheating on you. I was having tea with a policeman, for gosh sakes!" she says.

Teal'c doesn't respond, but keeps making moves that are way too advanced for his wife's beginning skill level. She falls to the floor, vanquished, and he doesn't stop. Teal'c holds the staff to her neck making breathing extremely difficult.

"Uncle, geez, Teal'c," she says.

"What does your parent's brother have to do with this?" he asks.

"Let me up, I give up!" she says.

There is a second between when the words reach his brain, and when he releases her neck. She puts out her hand in order to help her stand up from the floor.

"Teal'c, I would never cheat on you," she says.

"In the future you will not have conversations with men unless I am there."

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that."

"In the future you will not have conversations with men unless I am there," he repeats in a more commanding tone.

"Ok, I don't know what the rules for male/female relationships are on Chulak, but here on Earth girls get to choose who to spend their time with," she says angrily, taking a step toward him.

"I will not permit you to cheat on me while remaining married," he says, taking a step toward her and towering over her.

"I am not cheating on you!" she practically shouts.

"I witnessed it myself," he says, putting a hand on her shoulder.

It's enough to put her in flashback mood. She does what she always does when she is dealing with a nasty memory, she tries to leave.

"Come back here, woman," he says, grabbing onto her hair.

She yelps in pain.

"I did not hurt you," he says.

Shelby doesn't say a word, but she walks over and grabs her shoes and her coat.

"Where are you going?" Teal'c asks.

"I'm not going to tell you where I am going!" she says.

"You have always informed me of where you would be on previous occasions when you have left the house. I assumed that this was part of being married on this planet," he says.

"Well, the rules change after you abuse me," she says.

His heart clenches when he realizes what is happening. "I do not want you to be in danger. Take the car, and stay at a hotel or with a friend. I do not wish for you to live on the street."

"You don't have a say in where I go," he says.

"Do you have enough currency?" he asks.

"I'm not going to take your money," she says.

"Take your own money, you have a good job," he says.

She's confused by his concern. She's not used to this from the people that abuse her. But she knows that sometimes it happens.

She's seen it with her mother. Sometimes they say they are sorry. Sometimes they are sweet and romantic. Sometimes you love them, and can't imagine your life without them.

And that is worse than the abuse. The fact that she might not be able to escape it. She might be caught in the same cycle of abuse her mother, her grandmother, and untold generations of women before her were.

That scares Shelby more than anything else.

-0-0-0-

Sam goes to answer the door, and is surprised to see Shelby.

"Come on in, are you ok?" Sam asks with concern.

"I… I had to leave," she says, feeling foolish now that she's here. But she walks forward into the house.

"What happened?" Sam asks.

"He… pulled my hair. Can I stay here tonight?" Shelby asks.

"Teal'c would never hurt you," Sam says.

Jack walks in the room, "No, Samantha. If she's scared enough to leave him and come here, he hurt her. Go check to make all the doors are locked. I'll get some bedding for the couch."

-0-0-0-

Shelby is standing in the living room when Jack returns. "I'm sorry about all of this."

"Shelby, I don't think I ever told you this before, but my mom abused my dad."

"I… I might be overreacting," Shelby says, looking down.

"No, don't let Sam do that to you. I love Teal'c like a brother. But if he hurt you… I'll do whatever is necessary to keep you safe."

"He offered me money and car keys, and he was all worried about me when I left," she says.

"That sounds like Teal'c," Jack agrees.

"I love him," Shelby says.

"I know that."

"Maybe I overreacted, because when I was a kid…" she breaks off.

"Maybe, or maybe he comes from a culture with a very different view on woman than ours, and he thinks its ok to hurt women, and it's not."

Shelby touches her scalp, "Maybe it's a little of both."

"Maybe. You can decide how bad it is when morning comes," Jack says.

Shelby nods, and Jack starts to head upstairs to help Sam with tucking his children in, until he is stopped by Shelby's voice.

"Jack… maybe you can call him and tell him that I'm ok. I'm pretty sure that he's not going to come and pound down the door in the middle of the night," Shelby says.

"I'll take care of it."

-0-0-0-

"Shelby?" Teal'c asks hopefully as soon as he answers the phone.

"Sorry, T, it's just me."

"Is my wife in your place of residence?"

"Yeah, she's here and she's safe, and you should probably not be coming over tonight."

"Is she injured?"

"Not visibly, T."

"I never meant to hurt her," Teal'c says with pain in his voice.

Jack closes his eyes, "But you can't hurt her. Ever. Not even a little."

"Indeed," Teal'c says.

**The Next Day**

The doorbell rings, and Sam goes to answer it. Shelby is standing there in her pajamas looking at Teal'c on the other side of the door.

"Do you want me to leave?" he asks.

"No, come in," Shelby says.

"I'll just… go upstairs."

"Are you injured?" Teal'c asks.

Shelby shakes her head.

"I apologize for my actions."

"I shouldn't have left you."

"I never want to hurt you," Teal'c says.

Shelby holds her head down, and is silent.

"If you come home, I promise not to hurt you on future occasions," he says.

"I've heard that before."

"I have not said this to you on previous occasions," Teal'c says.

"No, you haven't. But I have heard it from a lot of people. When I was growing up that is the sort of thing that the people who hurt my mom… and me, said to her. They'd say it, and she took them back, she always took them back. And then eventually they would leave, but she would just find another loser. They say that people who were abused end up with abusers. I'm scared, Teal'c. I left you this time. But I'm just afraid that if I do go back to you, I might not have the courage to leave again."

"I will not injure you again," he says.

"But I never thought that you would injure me the first time."

"If I injure you again, I will force you to leave," Teal'c says.

"But what if you don't? If I can't trust you not to choke me, and pull my hair, than I can't trust you leave me after you do it."

"O'Neill will not allow you to be injured," Teal'c replies.

"Ok, so I'm supposed rely on some other man to ride up on a while horse to save me? How is that better?"

"I did not specify which member of the O'Neill family I was referring too, so you could be relying on a female to save you."

"I love you, Teal'c," she whispers.

"The feeling is reciprocal," Teal'c replies stoically.

She leans forward, and falls into his arms, "Last chance, T."

"Indeed."

**Note: Teal'c comes off sounding like a jerk in this chapter, and it's partly because Jaffa culture is so different. When Teal's wife moved on after he left her, that resulted in a fight where he yanked her around by her hair so I don't think I'm way out of character here. Also, he doesn't get Earth customs, and the fact that getting a number doesn't always mean that someone asked you on a date. **


	62. Part 6 Chapter 1

**Spoilers for "Threshold"**

**Two Months Later**

"Are you sure you want to be here when he comes?" Janet asks Shelby.

"Of course I want to be there, my husband was brainwashed by his former boss, I have to be there."

"I just mean… it might be pretty hard, and we can take care of him. You don't need to be here."

"I do."

"Shol'va!" Teal'c's voice shouts down the hallway. "Your god will punish you for your disobedience."

"Teal'c!" Shelby scolds, somehow believing that her voice is all her husband is going to need to bring him back to reality.

"Woman! Your god is weak in comparison to Apophis!" Teal'c decrees.

Shelby blinks in shock. She knew that Jaffa considered the Goa'uld to be their gods, but she had never considered her husband worshiping snakes with the same fervor with which she worshiped God.

"Come on, Apophis is just a parasite. It's exactly like the parasite that you carry around in your stomach."

"You will die for your insolence, woman!" he says, lurching at her. It takes four airmen to hold him down, and then they pick him up and tie him down to a bed.

They wrap the straps around his arms, and someone rushes for another one for around his neck.

Shelby stands by in shock and horror. She is beginning to believe that Janet was right about her not really needing to be here.

Jack come up, and put a hand on her arm, "Are you ok?"

"I guess that depends if the effects of this are reversible," she replies.

"Oh come on, Shelby, it's Teal'c."

"It's Teal'c who is calling his teammates 'Shol'va' and worshipping the snake in his belly."

"It's temporary," Jack assures her.

"It sounds a little bit like what he was like before."

"Before?" Jack asks.

"Before me, before you, before Teal'c of Chulak became Teal'c of the Ta'uri."

"So what, you think this is the 'real' Teal'c, and then man we've all gotten to know in the last FOUR years was a lie?"

"Not exactly. I'm just saying that it's possible there are a lot of sides of Teal'c, and that this one might just be a true and as real as all of the rest of them."

"Teal'c, the real Teal'c, is going to be coming back soon," Jack assures her.

**The Next Day**

"Tek'ma'te, Master Bra'tec," Shelby says, bowing low before the Jaffa as he comes through the gate.

"Are you the wife of Teal'c?"

"Indeed," she says in Goa'uld.

Bra'tec responds with something that that is much too fast for Shelby to catch. Her attempts at learning her husband's language are going slower than she intended. It turns out that she's even worse at this than she is at Jaffa Martial Arts.

"Maybe we could do English," Shelby says with a sheepish smile.

"Has Teal'c recovered?" Bra'tec asks.

"Dr. McKenzie thinks that he has recovered," Shelby says.

"And what does his wife think?" Bray'tec asks searchingly.

"I think that… he's not the man I married," she says.

"I would like to see him," Bray'tec says.

"Jaffa don't show many emotions. I think it makes you guys a lot better at reading the few things that you do show in each other," she says.

"I think that is an accurate picture of our culture," Bray'tec says, "Take me to him."

-0-0-0-

Bra'tac walks up to his Teal'c, grabbing his arm in a Jaffa form of a hug, "Hello, old friend."

"Master Bra'tac, it has been too long," Teal'c says, with warmth in his voice, if not in his face.

"So it has. Your friends of Earth took great pains in bringing me here," Bra'tac says with a wide smile. He keeps holding Teal'c's arm, even though Teal'c is trying to walk away. "You are correct in your assertion that your husband is deceiving you," he says to Shelby.

Teal'c breaks away from his Master, and starts running down the hall at full speed. Shelby hits the wall, trying to avoid all confrontation. Two airmen step out to try to stop him, but Teal'c pushes them aside without much effort.

Shelby stay against the wall for a couple of seconds before she get the courage to go around the corner. Sam is standing there with a zat pointed at Teal'c.

Teal'c tries to turn around, but not only Shelby, but Bra'tac and a row of airman are preventing his escape from that direction.

"Shol'va!" Teal'c shouts at Bra'tac again. Bra'tac zats him, and pulls his shirt aside to reveal the stomach pouch. Shelby looks away, because it's still a part of her husband that she likes to pretend does not exist.

When she turns back, she sees the symbiote in Bra'tac's hand.

"What are you doing? You have to put that back! He's going to die without it," Shelby protests.

"If Teal'c won't hear the truth in words, he must learn of it another way. The only way left to us."

-0-0-0-

Shelby has never got to sit in the briefing room before. It's not exactly the sort of place that nurses go. Usually it's just for people that go off world, and General Hammond. If anyone from the infirmary sat at this table, it was Janet.

But she's Teal's wife, and she's the only one that can make medical decisions on behalf of her husband.

"Please explain to me what it is you hope to achieve by depriving Teal'c of his symbiote," General Hammond says, looking at the Jaffa.

"I hope to save him," Bra'tac says.

"By killing him?" Daniel asks.

Shelby flinches at the harshness of the words. It's not like she didn't know that her husband could die, but she really doesn't like it being pointed out so obviously.

"If necessary," Bray'tac says.

"See, I think we disagree on the meaning of the word 'save'," Jack says.

"You would have him remain this way, loving a false god, spitting and cursing?" Bra'tac asks.

"At least he's alive," Shelby says.

"There may be other methods we haven't considered," Sam offers.

"I have seen your methods. You underestimate the hold Apophis has on Teal'c's heart. In time, you will have little choice but to lock him away, for he is far too dangerous an enemy to have in your midst. The Rite of Malsuraan is the only way," Bra'tec says.

Shelby's stomach sinks as the word "malsuraan" translates in her head as Daniel translates it out loud. "Last Rite."

Suddenly Shelby realizes how much is at stake. If she doesn't do this, he's going to go to jail, forever. Teal'c was a warrior; he was a man of action. There was no way that he would choose sitting around and waiting over doing something active to try to save himself.

"To save Teal'c's soul, first we must take him to the very threshold of death. On Chulak, it is said that when a warrior is dying, the events that forged him wash over his mind like a great wave," the Jaffa explains.

"His whole life passes before his eyes, we have a similar… uh, where does that get us?" Jack asks.

"Through his fever and hallucination, he will re-live his true path, buried beneath this lie," Bra'tac explains.

"You've done this before?" Jack asks.

"Twice, in my 137 years."

Shelby takes a quick breath of relief. Ok, so this isn't totally uncharted territory. Maybe her husband is going to make it out of this completely unscathed.

"Did they remember the pain?" Shelby asks. A few of the times that her mother detoxed, there was a lot of pain involved, but her mother hadn't even remembered the pain afterword. She wouldn't feel so bad about allowing them to do this to her husband if she was sure that he wouldn't remember it.

"Neither Jaffa had the strength to turn back from the precipice. But I am content they died free. Teal'c would ask for nothing more. I owe him that. Do you?" Bra'tec asks, looking right into Shelby's eyes.

"I don't like this, but I know it's what he would have picked if he was in his right mind. And that's what a medical proxy is supposed to do, right? Speak for people who can't speak for themselves."

-0-0-0-

Teal'c is screaming in pain with his eyes closed at some memory that no-one else can see.

"You have to give him something for the pain!" Shelby says.

Janet rushes over to obey the order of her subordinate.

Bra'tac puts up his hand to stop her, "Pain is what we seek. Teal'c's path was laid down with suffering. It is the path he must take to return to us."

Shelby squirms. She finds herself wishing that she knew more about her husband's past. For the most part they don't talk about the decades that he lived before he met her. They only served to remind them of how much older he was than her.

"He's unconscious," Shelby says, rubbing her husband's hand right above the strap.

"All the better," the Jaffa says.

"What?" Shelby asks in shock.

"It is his unconscious mind we must reach. I know my ways are foreign to you, but I have known Teal'c longer than any of you have lived. I have walked his path. You cannot hope to understand the darkness in his heart as I do," he says sadly, meeting the eyes of each of the people around Teal'c's bed, but lingering on the eyes of the young wife who cannot even begin to understand her husband, "Trust in me. All of you."

Shelby nods her head, slowly and carefully. She has to trust him, this man who knows more about her husband that she ever can.

"For the moment, I must meditate in Kel'no'reem. This rite will take most of the night and I am tired from my long journey here. In the meantime, stay with him, speak to him."

"He can't hear us unless he wakes up."

"Perhaps not in his mind. But in his heart. Even in silence, he will know of your presence, but your words will force him to remember. Challenge him when he does, question his beliefs. Without his symbiote, he will not resist reason so readily."

-0-0-0-

"O'Neill. What is happening? Why am I restrained?" Teal'c says, looking around, confused, and then up at his wife.

"Well, you were sort of… trying to kill everyone these past few weeks," Jack says from his place in the chair.

"I could never have harmed you. The Rite of Malsuraan has been successful. Please release me," Teal'c says.

"I would like to be able to trust you," Shelby says carefully.

"I am not your enemy. We are married."

"Tell us about Va'lar," Daniel says.

"I have not heard that name in years. I trained with him under Bra'tac. We served in the personal guard of Apophis," Teal'c replies.

"What happened?" Shelby asks lightly touching his arm. She doesn't miss the fact that his arm goes slightly tense under her touch.

"What happened to him?" Daniel asks.

"He failed his god," Teal'c says calmly.

"His god? You mean that scum-sucking, over-dressed, boom-box-voiced snake-in-the-head? Latest on our long list of dead bad guys?" Jack says with spite.

Shelby looks over at the heart monitor, and notices the rate is racing. Teal'c strains against his restraints, an says , "Ka'shak! No Jaffa can survive the Rite of Malsuraan. You are allowing Bra'tac to kill me! Where is he? Shol'va! Where are you?" Teal'c shouts.

The monitor is going the other way now, and Shelby reaches over to put an IV into her husband. He closes his eyes, and she knows that another whole world is going on beneath his lids, but it is a world that she cannot reach.

-0-0-0-

"Do you not know the meaning of faith?" Teal'c asks Shelby.

"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the assurance of things not seen."

"Then you should know that my faith in Apophis is beyond question," Teal'c says.

"But if you remember me, and our life together, you remember a time when you abandoned that faith."

"Never! Apophis is a god," Teal'c proclaims.

"False god. Dead, false god," Daniel says.

"Your words cannot change the truth," Teal'c says.

"They're not my words, Teal'c, they're yours. Of course, you were wrong at the time because he wasn't… actually dead. But that's neither here nor there…" Daniel says.

"Lies!" Teal'c says, straining.

"Come on, Teal'c. You carry a symbiote within you, all Jaffa do. Each one of those would take a host, and become a Goa'uld. How can they all be gods?"

"Do not test my temper, woman!" Teal'c says.

"I hate it when he calls me that," Shelby mutters to Daniel and Jack, knowing that her husband is already deep into a flashback.


	63. Part 6 Chapter 2

Shelby stares at the symbiote in the container. "You know, it's funny. I used to hate that stupid snake. But then I accepted it, I came to realize that without that snake, my husband would be a different person than he is. I never really stopped to consider that that isn't really true. Without a snake in his belly, my husband wouldn't even exist. I'm mean, he's over 100 years old, so if he wasn't a Jaffa, he'd be dead. And watching him suffer because he doesn't have a symbiote is just really making me realize how important that thing is."

Janet puts a hand on the younger woman's back in a sign of support.

"How is it doing, anyway?" Janet asks.

"The symbiote is fine for now, although I don't know what we're going to do with it if we let Teal'c die. But, it won't be my problem. I'll have already resigned if we let this go that far. I'm a doctor, Shelby. This goes against every part of me to just stand by and do nothing."

"Do you think I should stop them?" Shelby asks, fidgeting. She's still very young, and even though she is now out of college, and with her new "real" job, she still feels a little like a kid.

Janet sighs, "You're making the choice Teal'c would make for himself."

"Right, except my husband is actually making a choice. He's screaming to be let free, and to have his symbiote returned to him."

"Honey, that's not really Teal'c that is saying those things."

"I know, but what if he dies?" Shelby asks with a sob that she has to work hard to keep inside of her.

"Honey, he's not going to die," Janet says, pulling the women into a hug. Janet feels unbelievably motherly toward this women before her. Not that Janet is old enough to be Shelby's mother, of course. At least not unless she gave birth in her pre-teen years. But the difference between this woman and her own daughter is less than a decade, and if feels like less when this women in front of her in the middle of a crisis. "We're not going to let him die," she says, offering a smile to her.

-0-0-0-

"Shelby, how can you allow them to do this to me?" Teal'c asks with pain in his voice.

"Teal'c, I have to do this, I don't have a choice," she says, her voice sounding far more certain than she actually felt.

"I have no wish to die, Major Carter. You and Dr Fraiser could yet save me."

"You're not going to die," Shelby says, desperately trying to convince herself.

"I am being murdered as we speak."

"We're helping you," Shelby says, taking hold of his hand beneath the bound wrist. It requires her to twist her hand into a strange angle, but she is so determined to hold hands with her husband that she doesn't even flinch.

"Help me escape. Please," Teal'c says.

"Oh, God. Teal'c, we want you to remember," Sam pleads.

"How would it be if you were punished for loving your god as I love mine?" he asks her, locking eyes with her.

"It's not the same," she says, bristling. Shelby has read enough about the persecuted church in other times and places to feel a kinship with them, and certainly knows that she is not among them, unlike some of her fellow churchgoers.

"I can't but help what I believe any more than you can," he says distantly.

"You believe in freedom, Teal'c. You believe in justice, in protecting people from false gods. You despise everything Apophis was," she says firmly. And then her husband slips into another flashback.

-0-0-0-

Shelby was watching the monitor when it went crazy. She sort of knew that is was going to do that. When you are around the sick and dying long enough, you get a sense for when things are about to go badly. So as soon as he hits de-fib, she calls for help with all the words which have become automatic, not only through her schooling but also through her time at the SGC.

"I'm returning the symbiote," Janet says, snatching the thing out of a jar and holding it above Teal'c's body.

A few people in the room turn to Shelby, waiting to see what her response is going to be before they spring into action.

"Stand aside," Bray'tec says.

"If I don't return it immediately…" Janet argues.

"Stand aside, or his suffering will be for nothing. This is the moment when he must choose," Bray'tec says, looking deep into his friend's eyes.

Hammond looks at Shelby, waiting for her to have the final word. She looks from one to the other, and starts to open her mouth. But then he feels for her, she's younger than either of his daughters. There is no way that he's going to let her bear the burden of this decision, no matter which way she chooses, it could go very badly. He's a General, his whole job is about making tough choices. He's used to it, and one tough choice more or less isn't going to make or break anything.

"Stand aside, Dr Fraiser," he says into the microphone in the observation room.

She takes a step away, and Bray'tec walks right up to the bed, and gets close to the face of his former apprentice, "Choose now, Teal'c. Return to those who love freedom, or die in the name of a false god. Choose! Choose to be the warrior we know! Renounce Apophis and return to us!"

"It's now or never," Janet pleas.

"Choose!" Bra'tac shouts, apparently confused by Teal'c's lack of movement.

"Very well," he says, taking a step back to let Dr. Fraiser move in. She loses no time putting the symbiote in.

"We waited too long. Charge to two hundred," she says.

Shelby walks over to charge the defibrillator, but one of her fellow nurses taps her on the shoulder. She graciously yields to her, understanding why people never work on their own family members. Not to mention the fact that it would be her first time using the paddles, and she wants someone more experienced working on her husband.

Suddenly, after the shock, Teal'c opens his eyes, and says, "I choose freedom."

"The rite has succeeded. He has returned to us," Bray'tec says with relief.

Shelby feels herself going faint, and is grateful when she feels the seat of a chair lightly touching the back of her knees. She glances back to see that Daniel has pushed a chair up behind her, and she takes it without comment shooting him a quick smile.

"Uh, just out of curiosity… how do you feel about…?" Jack says carefully.

"Apophis is a false god. A dead, false god," Teal'c says.

**The Next Day**

"Master Bray'tac, I wanted to take you to eat at one of the finer dining establishments of this planet; however, I am not being permitted you leave this base in your company."

"It is fine, Teal'c, I am most interested in experiencing the kind of food that you eat on a daily basis."

"I no longer eat at the base on a regular basis," Teal'c replies.

"Of course, your wife cooks for you. It is a pity that I won't get to experience that."

"I'm actually not that great of a cook," Shelby says.

"My wife works in the medical field," Teal'c says, puffing out his chest.

"I'm just a nurse," Shelby says bashfully as they get in line in the mess.

"She has more knowledge than any healer that I've ever been too. Shelby, recite for Bray'tac the names of the bones of the skull." Teal'c helped her study for that test, a long time ago, before they were even dating, and she can't believe he's still surprised that she has that knowledge.

"Come on, any high school student who takes anatomy can do that," she says.

"I never took anatomy," he says.

"Right, but you're like super-smart," she says.

"Why are we standing here when the food is over there?" Bra'tac asks.

"We must wait in line," Teal'c replies calmly, having completely forgotten how odd he found this when he first came to Earth.

"Why?" Bra'tac asks.

Teal'c turns to him, and blinks slowly, "I am uncertain." He looks at Shelby, obviously expecting an answer.

"Because that is what you do in a polite society," she explains.

"I think that Jaffa society is incredibly polite," Teal'c says.

"Formal isn't the same as polite. No-one on Earth comes to blows over the last turkey leg."

"It was not turkey, and my son and I did not come to blows. We were merely sparring."

"What do you mean it wasn't turkey?" Shelby asks in horror, "What was it?"

"There is no word for it in your language," he replies.

"What do you mean there is no word for it in my language? You let me eat some sort of alien creature?"

By this time they are in the front of the line, and Teal'c loads up his plate with the enormous amounts of food she's used to seeing him with. "I have been eating alien creatures for the last five years."

"But… aliens," she protests.

"I assure you that the creature you consumed was not sentient," he replies.

"Well, that's something," she mutters.

"All of my favorite dishes come from a planet on which I did not reside," Bra'tec replies, "Remember the worms of Bree?"

Teal'c closes his eyes as if he was still savoring the taste.

"You ate worms?" his wife asks in disgust.

"As did you," Teal'c replies.

"I cannot believe you let me eat a worm!"

"You enjoyed the eating of worms. You asked me to cook them for you," Teal'c replies.

"You cook for your wife?" Bra'tac asks in shock.

"It is an Earth courting ritual," Teal'c says, looking embarrassed at being found out.

"Have you acquired any other skills of which I am unaware?" Bra'tac asks.

"I have learned to operate a motor vehicle," Teal'c replies.

"How large are these vehicles?" Bra'tac asks.

"I believe the average size is 4.6 meters," Teal'c replies.

"This is perhaps the smallest vehicle you have ever operated. Surely it did not take much effort to learn how to operate this vehicle," Bra'tac replies.

"It requires far more movement of the hands than any vehicle that I have previously operated. It also requires the operation of my feet," Teal'c replies.

"You must do things with your feet and your hands? That is far too complicated, I am sure that this causes an inordinate amount of accidents. These people are truly primitive," Bra'tac says.

"Hey, now!" Shelby says as she puts her tray down on the table. The two men put their trays down right next to her.

"I did not mean to offend. There is nothing wrong with being primitive. In fact, there are benefits to it. There is some protection against the Goa'uld in being primitive," Bra'tac says.

"Well, considering the fact that several system lords have tried to wipe us out, we must not actually be that primitive," Shelby shoots back.

"There was no dialing device found with the Stargate. The people of the Tau'ri built their own," Teal'c says.

Bra'tac looks completely shocked, "That is truly impressive."

"Major Carter is the one who did this," Teal'c says proudly.

Bra'tac nods with approval.

Shelby feels a little inadequate, and starts to make a mountain out of her mashed potatoes.

Teal'c's hand goes to her knee, "My wife has brought people back from the edge of death."

"That's a bit of an exaggeration," she says, blushing.

"If Jaffa had the kind of medical services that my wife provides, we would not need to carry a symbiote," Teal'c says proudly.

"Well, that's not exactly true, considering the fact that the average human lifespan is only like seventy years, and Jaffa can live for hundreds with your little symbiote…" Shelby starts to object.

"I am glad that you found love, Teal'c," Bra'tac says, nodding in approval toward Shelby.

"You mean again, you're glad that he found love again," Shelby prompt.

"I meant what I said," Bra'tac says, looking at the girl with a serious expression on his face. "I am glad that he has at long last found someone to love."

Shelby makes a little gasp of surprise at this unexpected revelation.

"I have told you on many occasions that I have love you with more intensity than I have ever loved another," Teal'c says calmly.

Shelby leans over, and places a kiss on his cheek, and then scoots closer to him on the bench so their sides are touching one another.

"I love you, too, Teal'c, I love you, too," she says.

"I have stories of Teal'c's youth with which to regale you, if you so choose," Bra'tac says.

"Mini-Teal'c stories? I'm all game."

"I do not wish to have these stories told," Teal'c replies.

"Really? Not even the one when you were fourteen, and a band of boys dressed up as priestess?"

"Wait, what? Teal'c, you wore a dress? I cannot picture you in a dress!" Shelby exclaims.

"It is best if you do not attempt it," Teal'c says, glaring at his Master. At least as much as you can glare without actually showing any emotions.

"Why were you wearing a dress?" Shelby asks.

"They were sneaking into the house of the Temple Priestess," Bra'tac replies.

"We were training ourselves for covert missions," Teal'c replies, warning Bra'tac to shut his mouth with the careful lift of an eyebrow.

"Is that why you ended up in Shau'nac's chamber?" Bra'tac teases.

Shelby scoots away from her husband.

"I would prefer if you kept your stories to things which would not cause my wife to become upset," Teal'c says, scooting over so he's in contact with his wife again.

"Its fine, Teal'c; I know you weren't a monk before I met you. And we've already had arguments over Shau'nac," Shelby says, bristling at his close presence, but not quite willing to move away from him.

"Actually, Teal'c was a monk, briefly," Bra'tac says.

"What?" Shelby asks in shock.

"He challenged someone in an attempt to raise in ranks. He was too young, and had not completed his training, and when he failed the challenge, he withdrew from the military service and became a monk."

"I came to my senses, after a month," Teal'c pouts.

"More stories, Master Bra'tac, please. Tell me every stupid thing that my husband has ever done."

"That would be a lengthy tale," Master Bra'tac says.

"Indeed," Teal'c replies.


	64. Part 6 Chapter 3

**One Month Later**

"You know I love hockey, but it does have its downside," Ty says as he finishes tying his skates just outside the hockey rink.

"The fights?" Emma suggests.

"The fact that you can't fight when you're still a kid?" Hannah guesses.

"The fact that the sport is technically not school-sponsored, so your parents have to drive you to every game?" Sam suggests.

"The fact that your family asks silly questions?" Jack says.

"I was going to say the fact that the helmet totally messes up your hair," Ty says.

"We'll fix it when you get off the ice," Sam says as Jack tries desperately (and fails) to avoid rolling his eyes.

Ty pulls the helmet over his head, and skates onto the ice.

"Daddy, when can I play hockey?" Hannah asks.

"Well, I'm going to make you wait a couple more years, and then you can pick any sport you want to. You could be in ballet like your sister is and your brother used to be, or you could decide to play basketball or baseball or water polo," Jack says.

"I don't even know what water polo is, and I'm going to play hockey, 'cause that's your favorite, Daddy."

"Oh, that's not true, Han, my favorite is whatever sport my kids are into," he says.

"So your favorite is ballet?" Emma asks excitedly.

"Yeah, sure, you betcha, there is nothing better than a good ballet recital," he says.

"Brother's got the puck," Hannah informs her father.

"Go Ty!" he says, dangling Hannah by her armpits and standing up in all the excitement.

"Daddy, you said that ballet was your favorite," Emma pouts.

"It is when you're doing it, sweetie. Right now, Ty is doing hockey, so hockey is my favorite," Jack says without even glancing at her.

"When I get home, watch me dance?" Emma asks.

"Sure, I'll even help you practice the lifts like we did last time," he assures her.

"Thanks, Daddy," she says, standing up on the bleachers to put a kiss on his cheek.

"Score!" he shouts as Ty makes a hit into the bucket.

Sam reaches over to take Hannah from his arms, since the toddler is rocking back and forth in a dangerous manner.

**The Next Day**

"Tammy, come play with us," Becky Lynn wines from the floor where she is wrestling with Teal'c.

Tammy shakes her head without making a single sound.

"Do you want to watch TV, then?" Shelby asks.

"No," Tammy whispers.

Shelby walks over, and sits on the couch next to her sister, "Is something wrong? Are you getting picked on at school or something?" Shelby knows that nothing makes you a target more than being poor. Which is sad, because poor kids are one ones who can least deal with isolation from friends.

Tammy shakes her head.

"Well, something is going on with you, tell me," she says, touching her arm. Tammy flinches.

"Oh, God," Shelby says, using the Lords name in vain for the first time in her life, "Honey, can I talk to you into the other room?"

"Is everything ok?" Teal'c asks, looking up at her.

"I just need to talk to my sister," she says, trying to force her face into a smile, but not quite managing.

She ushers the little girl into the master bedroom, figuring that the things they are about to discuss belongs in an adult space.

Tammy sits down on the bed, and Shelby kneels before her, trying desperately not to cry. "Tammy, did your Daddy touch you somewhere bad?"

Tammy doesn't say anything, she just starts to cry.

"Oh, honey," Shelby says.

"I'm sorry," Tammy mutters.

"Not your fault, it is his fault, ok? And I'm going to make sure he doesn't do this to you again. This is not ok, you hear me?" she says with voice edged in anger.

Teal'c knocks on the door.

"Come on in," Shelby says.

"What has occurred to distress Tammy?" he asks.

"I'm going to call up Mom and tell her we are keeping the kids for a little longer," Shelby says.

"I enjoy having your sisters with me for as long as possible," Teal'c says.

"Will Teal'c be mad if he knows?" Tammy asks timidly.

"Yes, he will, but not at you," Shelby answers honestly.

"Has someone injured her?" Teal'c asks angrily.

Tammy collapses onto the bed, hiding her face in embarrassment.

"Who has injured her?" Teal'c demands.

"Teal'c, we're going to talk about this later," she says softly.

"Why won't you tell him? If it wasn't my fault, you'd tell him?" Tammy ways.

Shelby moves herself between the door and her husband, "Teal'c, Tammy's father touched her."

His eyes search his wife's face for a second, he's not familiar with the Earth terms, but he still has a gut feeling of what she means, "Where did he touch her?"

"Teal'c," Shelby says her non-answer being enough.

"I shall kill him," he says with absolute certainty, moving past his wife as if she wasn't even blocking his way in the least.

"Teal'c, you can't," Shelby pleads.

"He deserves to die!" Teal'c proclaims.

"I agree, but if you are in jail, you won't be around to protect her," Shelby says.

"If I kill him, she won't need to be protected from anyone," Teal'c says.

"Except the next loser my mom brings home!" Shelby shouts.

Teal'c looks in her eyes, realizing with horror a lot of things about his wife that he never knew.

"I will not allow her to go back to that house. If I have to take her offworld, I will," Teal'c proclaims.

"Offworld?" Tammy asks from the bed, fascinated by the argument going on around her.

"We're going to keep her safe," Shelby says.

"How?" Teal'c asks.

"I have no idea, I just know that we're going to do it. You stay with her, don't hug unless she asks for it. And I'm going to go tell Mom that the girls are spending the week with us without tipping my hand."

-0-0-0-

"Is this Officer Shanahan?" Shelby asks into the phone.

"Speaking, who is this?" he asks.

"This is Shelby… you met me a couple of months ago when my husband was getting accused of things that he didn't do. And then you saw me again a while ago outside of my apartment building," she says.

"I remember you, how can I help you?" Pete says.

"I have a sister who is in a bad situation," she says.

"Right, well, I think it's really good that your 'sister' is asking for help," Pete says on the other end of the phone.

"No, it's really my sister, my baby sister, she's ten. She's only ten," Shelby says with more emotion in her voice than she meant it to be.

"What happened?" the policeman says.

"Her father…"Shelby fumes.

"He hit her, right? Her father would be your stepfather, I assume?" Pete says, believing Shelby's story for the first time.

"Right, but he didn't hit her. He molested her," Shelby says.

"My god, does she live with him?"

"Yes, but they're staying with us for a week."

"They?"

"I've got two sisters, a ten-year-old and a seven-year-old. They are staying with my husband and I for a week. I figured that would be long enough for us to get them some kind of protection. I just don't know how to go about protecting a little kid from her father."

"Did he hurt both of them?"

"No. I mean, at least, I don't think so. I should probably ask Becky Lynn. But I really don't think so, because it didn't start until…" she pauses, knowing she's reveled too much.

"He did this to you too," Pete says.

"This is why I left home at fourteen," she confesses quietly.

"Listen, I'm going to send social services over, your sister is going to have to explain what happened."

"Well, that will be fun," she says sarcastically.

"Telling your story will probably help."

"Great, it will be a party," she says.

"And I can't promise that they're going to be placed with you, they could easily end up in the foster care system."

"Teal'c and I have taken care of them before. I mean, mom's dropped them off, and they call us up when they get scared or when Mom is stupid. And last year we took care of them when she was in rehab," Shelby explains.

"That is going to help."

"So you're going to send social services over to my house?" she asks.

"Yeah, I've got the address on file here."

"I never thought I would be asking for someone to send social services over."

"We're not the enemy, ma'am," he says.

-0-0-0-

Shelby spends several minutes trying to think of a way to spin this. She finally realizes that she's never going to find the words that is going to make what she is about to say very palatable, so she's going to have to go with what she has.

She walks into the room that she shares with Teal'c and sits down on the bed so the small girl is between them. "Tammy, tomorrow, a nice person is going to come to our house. You're going to have to tell them what your dad did to you, and then you are not going to have to go back to him. You're probably going to stay with Teal'c and I."

"For how long?" Tammy asks.

"Probably forever."

"What about Mommy?"

"As long as your Mommy is with your Daddy, you can't live with her," Shelby says softly.

"I wish Mommy was the person she says she is," Tammy whispers.

"You and me both, honey," Shelby sighs to her sister.

"And I don't want to tell anyone about what Daddy did," she says.

"I know," Shelby says. God did she know. "How about if I tell him about what he did to me fist?"

"'Cause he hit you."

"That's not all that he's done," she says, locking eyes with her little sister.

Teal'c starts to stand up, no doubt preparing to kill someone, "Sit down! We need to be on our best behavior. Otherwise, they won't get to stay with us."

"He deserves to die for his actions," Teal'c says.

"First, we need to keep him from repeating his actions," Shelby says, "I need to go talk to Becky Lynn."

"Don't tell her!" Tammy says, looking completely panicked.

"I'm not, I'm just going to tell her that you guys might be staying with us for a long time."

-0-0-0-

Shelby is emotionally exhausted by the time she's explained it to Becky Lynn, and made sure that her youngest sister hadn't suffered the same abuse. She gets the kids off to bed, and reads them a story.

When she goes into the bedroom, Teal'c is already kel-no-reeming on the floor with his legs crossed.

She gets into bed, and lays there wishing that her husband was human so his arms would be wrapped around her. So that he would sleep next to her, and make her feel like everything was going to be ok.

"We're going to need to buy a house," she says.

He hates it when she interrupts his kal-no-rem, sometimes it takes him hours to get back into it. But he will still be awake for more of the night than she will be.

"Why is this purchase necessary?" Teal'c asks without opening his eyes.

"We've got kids."

"They have stayed with us on previous occasions."

"I know, but this time they're not staying with us. This time they are going to live with us. This time, we're going to be parents. And they need their own room, and we've got four people in one bathroom, and that is not going to work. And they need a backyard, Tammy likes to build her little forts out of sticks and Becky Lynn loves to plant those branches. She always thinks they're going to grow into trees. Of course, they're not going to, but that's not the point..."

"We will ensure that the children have everything that they require," he says.

"We both have dangerous jobs, so we're going to have to figure out who is going to take care of them if something happened to us. There are probably papers involved with that, and I don't know anything about papers. Actually, there are probably papers involved with taking them. Are we going to have to go to court? I don't know if I can go to court."

"I am unfamiliar with your legal system."

"Does our apartment go to the same elementary school as their house? I suppose it doesn't matter, because we are going to have to get a house," Shelby says, completely confused as to why her husband hasn't started panicking yet.

"It does not; however, we can apply for open enrollment."

"What are you talking about? And how do you know about open enrollment?"

"I attended a school board meeting before we first met," he replies.

"You know everything. You know about open enrollment, and you've raised a kid before, and you're not freaking out, so you win!"

He finally opens his eyes, and peers at her, "I was unaware that I entered a contest, but I am pleased that I am the victor."

"So not funny!" Shelby says.

He comes over to the bed, and wraps his arms around her, "You are going to be a fine mother."

"How do you know?" she asks.

"I know you, Shelby," he replies.

She buries her head in his chest.

"Shelby?" Tammy's voice says from the door.

"What do you need?" Shelby asks, sitting up and moving away from her husband.

"Can I sleep here tonight?" she asks.

"Of course you may, I will retire to the living room for the evening," Teal'c says, trying to keep up the pretence that he sleeps.

"Can't you stay, please?" Tammy asks.

"If that's what you want," he says.

"Come on," Shelby says, patting the spot between them.

Tammy curls up between them, "The anger is like spaghetti snakes in my stomach."

"Yeah," Shelby agrees, even though the analogy doesn't make sense to her.

"He's my Daddy, and I love him," Tammy says.

"That's the worse part, isn't it?" Shelby asks.

Tammy nods.

"I would never hurt you in any way, and neither would Teal'c. You know that, right?" Shelby asks.

Tammy smiles, "That's why I came. It's much saflier with you." Tammy shuts her eyes after the regressed speech.

And Shelby's doubts about her ability to be a mother disappear. She can do this. All she has to do is make her sister 'saflier'. And she may not be able to be a great mother, but she can certainly be better than her mother was.


	65. Part 6 Chapter 4

"I want to discuss what your step-father did to you," Teal'c says as soon as Shelby opens her eyes the next morning.

"Yeah, we will, someday when there are not small ears between us," Shelby says over her sleeping sister's head.

"She is not conscious," Teal'c replies.

"Show me the CAT scan," Shelby says. She got really good at pretending to be asleep when she lived at her step-father's house. Not that her sister has had time to develop this talent yet, it's only been the one time.

"You should have told me about what occurred," he says stoically.

"It wasn't that important," Shelby mutters.

"I am your sexual partner; I should have known that you were sexually abused."

"Would it have changed your mind about being with me?" she asks suddenly, crushed by the thought.

He puts his hand on her shoulder carefully, "It most certainly would not have. However, I would have treated things between us differently."

"Differently than telling me that I should be able to make choices about my own body even when I was saying that I would not be having sex on our wedding night? You mean different than being gentle and kind and romantic? You were perfect."

"I still should have known," he says softly.

"I love you, Teal'c," she says.

"I harbor similar feelings for you as well," Teal'c replies.

-0-0-0-

Ms. Smith is exactly like all of the social workers that Shelby knew when she was young. But this time, they're going to save her sister.

She tells the woman her story first, like she promised her sister that she would. And then her sister tells everything. Tammy wanted Shelby and Teal'c in the room the whole time. Shelby was nauseous, and Teal'c was furious. But they both hid it and tried to make Tammy more comfortable.

And then the social worker made them go to a doctor, and Tammy cried during the exam.

And then they were granted temporary custody, and Ms. Smith left.

**Two Days Later**

"O'Neill, you have expressed some distress at Jaffa revenge customs in the past," Teal'c says.

"Yeah, murder isn't the best."

"What is the Earth custom for revenge?" Teal'c asks.

"I don't know, it depends on what they did," Jack replies.

"What if they have grievously injured those closest to you?" Teal'c asks.

"Shelby ok?" Jack asks.

"Tammy and Shelby have been treated deplorably by Tammy's father."

"Is this the racist one that beat Shelby? He didn't lay his hand on that little girl, did he?"

"He in fact laid many things on her," Teal'c replies.

"Is she ok? Did he hurt her?"

"She will be ok now that she has been removed from her mother's care pending her father's trial for sexual abuse."

"My God," Jack mutters quietly.

"I want to murder him," Teal'c says firmly.

"So do I," Jack says.

"Do you want to assist me?" Teal'c asks.

"You can't murder him."

"On Chulak, his crime is punishable by castration."

"That sounds about right."

"Public castration."

"Even better, but you can't do that to him."

"I do not understand Earth's customs in this matter. People should be punished."

"They will be punished. It's just that the law is going to do it instead of you."

"It takes all of the satisfaction out of revenge."

"T, if you guys ever need something, you should let me know. What you are going through has got to be pretty tough."

"I would like your guidance in the process of buying a house."

"You guys are getting a house?" Jack says with a smile.

"Shelby says that the girls require a backyard in which to play."

"Wait, the girl are staying with you, like forever?" Jack asks with a touch of shock.

"Indeed."

"Way to bury the lead! Congratulations, you're a daddy."

"I have in fact been a father for several years."

"Right, but you're a dad again, a full-time father."

"I will, in fact, be their brother-in-law," Teal'c corrects.

"I am not talking about a title here. You're going to be a father, a stories at bedtime, school programs, checking homework, playing in the backyard kind of father."

"I have done all these things on previous occasions with the girls."

"Right, but you're going to be a full-time dad. You're going to have to be there for them all the time. That's a big deal, Teal'c. A good thing, but a big thing."

"Do you think I'm unprepared for the task?"

"Of course not."

"On Chulak, fathers are not as involved in the upbringing of children as they are on Earth."

"You're great with those little girls," Jack says.

"I am going to be their father," Teal'c says, a bit of awe getting past his stoicism.

"That you are," Jack says, clasping him on the back energetically.

-0-0-0-

Shelby knows that she is trouble when she enters her bedroom and her husband is still sitting on their bed, except it's really mostly her bed, because he doesn't sleep. Anyway, the fact that Teal'c isn't meditating is sort of bad news.

"You promised that you would tell me about the trauma that you endured," Teal'c says.

"Right, I just don't know if this is the best time for it," she says.

"There are no ears of diminutive size within a distance that would allow them to hear, even if they were a Jaffa."

"Don't compare my sisters to a Jaffa," she says.

"You need to tell me," he says.

"You don't need to know. You don't want to know," she says.

"It may be true that I don't need to know, but you need to tell me."

She sits down next to him, "I know that you think I'm a wuss because I didn't fight back."

"I think you were a child," Teal'c says taking her hand.

"Right, but if you would have beat the crap out of him," she says.

"That doesn't make you weak," he says.

"It's different when it's your parent, you know. It's not like when it's a bully. It's someone that is supposed to take care of you and love you. It's someone who is supposed to protect you. And when they hurt you, you think that's the way the world is supposed to work."

Teal'c wraps an arm around her, and pulls Shelby closer to him.

"And then when I hit about ten years old… he started to hug me and cuddle me all the time. At first, I thought it was a really good thing. I liked the attention. And then it wasn't just cuddling," she says looking away.

He kisses her forehead, "How long did the abuse continue?"

"Until I ran away from home at fourteen. But it wasn't abuse. I mean, it was. He beat me. But he raped me too."

Anger flashes in Teal'c's eyes, but he rubs her arm in a comforting fashion, trying to be the loving husband that he is supposed to be.

"I wanted to die."

Teal'c doesn't understand this. He understands wanting to kill. That's the normal way to feel when someone has harmed you. But the desire to hurt yourself after someone has hurt you is lost on him.

"Remember when we first started dating, and you used to make fun of me for dressing like a nun?"

"You wear far more clothing than a temple priestess."

"Earth nun, not Jaffa nun."

"I believe I only made a few comment as to the bulkiness of your sweaters," he corrects.

"Right, well, that was all was 'cuz when I covered up a lot, he was more likely to leave me alone."

"I will not allow anyone to hurt you, no matter how you choose to attire yourself," Teal'c says.

"I know," Shelby says. She leans against Teal'c, "I told my mom."

"What?" Teal'c asks shocked.

"Back when I was a kid, I told my mom what the jerk was doing. She didn't believe me."

"Another betrayal by someone who was supposed to care for you."

She nods.

"If you had informed me of this at the beginning of our relationship, I would have ensured that the children were removed from the household."

"I know," Shelby says with despair in her voice, "I could have prevented it. But I honestly never thought he would do anything to them. He never hit them. And they were actually his children. You know I wasn't related to him, I was just his step-kid, not his blood."

"I man who is not deterred by the moral implications of sexual relations with a small child will probably not be deterred by the taboo against incest."

"I just… thought that he would only hurt me."

"You didn't do anything wrong. The fact that he hurt her proves that it was him and not you," he says.

"I just wish I had known that before. I would have done anything to protect them."

"You protected them now that something has happened, and that is more than you mom ever did."

"Can I come in?" a small voice says from the door.

Teal'c cringes at another night of ineffective horizontal meditation. But out loud he says, "You may."


	66. Part 6 Chapter 5

**Two Days Later**

"Come on, we're going to be late," Shelby says in exasperation as she pulls on Tammy's coat. "You've got your shoes on the wrong feet," she tells Becky Lynn.

"No, I don't," Becky Lynn says, looking down at them.

"They are," Tammy.

"They feel more comfortable that way," Becky Lynn says stubbornly.

"You can't go to school like that!" Shelby says.

"Mom lets her; she's stubborn," Tammy says.

"Yeah, well ,you guys don't live with your mother anymore," Shelby says, bending down to rip the shoes off her sister's feet.

"Owie!" Becky Lynn protests.

"Sorry, honey," Shelby says softly as she pulls the other shoe of her sister's foot gently. She's remembering now why she wasn't sure if she wanted to be a mother. She's not a patient person. She's not the sort of person who was born for this, and who dreamed about being a mother and played with dolls as a kid.

She puts her sister's foot into the correct shoe, and Tammy Lynn put her hands on her sister's shoulder to balance herself as one foot is off the ground. The unconscious demonstration of trust warms her sister's heart a bit.

Shelby laces up the shoe, "Is it too tight?" she asks softly.

"It's fine," Becky Lynn says, all her anger gone.

"Let's go," Shelby says, grabbing onto the children's hands, knowing that they are going to be even later than they were before. She is constantly underestimating how long it takes to get out of the house when children are involved. She is going to have to start planning to leave the house a lot sooner.

"Shelby," a voice stops her as she opens the door. It's her mother's voice.

"Tammy, take your sister inside, and lock the door," she instructs.

"But Mommy is here," Tammy protests.

"I know. Go."

It's not Tammy who makes the move. It couldn't be. She's not the strong one anymore. Not after she's been hurt. Becky Lynn grabs her sister's hand, and takes a few steps back. It is only when Shelby hears the clicking of the door over to locked that she walks toward her mother.

"I'm their mother. I would not hurt them."

"No, you let other people be the ones that do the hurting, but you certainly don't do anything to stop your kids from getting hurt," Shelby says.

"I didn't know," she says broken.

"I told you."

"And I didn't believe it. I swear to you that if I had really believed he was doing it I never would have let him stay in the house."

"What makes you believe it now?" Shelby asks, sounding almost like she is going to break into tears.

"He admitted it. That bastard admitted that he's been raping my kids for years."

"Well, as long as he confirmed it, now we can believe it. Goodness knows that if it was only your kids telling you that it happened, there was no reason to believe it," Shelby says, voice laced in sarcasm.

"I said that I was sorry. The bastard is gone. I want my kids back."

"You don't deserve them," Shelby says firmly.

"He's gone, the man who abused you is gone. Nothing bad is going to happen to him. I did nothing wrong."

"Nothing wrong? You have picked person after person who abused your daughters, that is almost as bad as abusing them yourself."

"What?"

"God, look at my medical records, Mom! The staple in my head when I was two?"

"That was an accident!"

"Bullshit. And what about the broken arm?"

"You fell."

"Twice in six months?"

"You fell," Shelby's mother says more sternly.

"Mom, I'm telling you, growing up in that house was hell. That's why I left when I was fourteen. The only reason I stayed that long is because I was making sure that those kids were untouched. And then I started to trust. I started to think that you'd settled on a loser, and that this particular loser was never going to hurt his own children. If I thought for a second that those children were going to go through hell, I never would have left them there. And I sure as hell am not sending them back to you."

The women stands before her, looking broken and weary, "It was hell?"

Some part of Shelby wants to take pity on her. To comfort her, and tell her that things weren't so bad as all of that. But that part of her is very small, and it has been worn out be betrayal after betrayal, so there isn't enough of the feeling of sympathy to actually lead to action.

"I'm sorry," Shelby's mom says. Shelby never would have imagined that a single word would have done anything by way of healing her. But she feels something warm inside of her.

"I appreciate that, but I'm not going to take a chance on you hurting the kids again."

"You shouldn't," she says quickly, "You plan on keeping those kids?"

"They're my sisters," Shelby says.

"But you wanta keep 'em right?" Shelby's mother says, looking everywhere but in her daughter's face.

"Yeah," Shelby says. She may be worried about the fact that she's not prepared for motherhood. She's really worried that she might end up being the worst mother in the history of motherhood. But she's sure that she _wants_ to do this.

Those girls leaving her house now would be like the losing of a limb.

They might annoy her. She might miss free time, and her husbands' full attention.

But it was better than living without them. Anything was better than living without them.

Her mother smiles "I never wanted kids. And then you came out. And you were so great. I thought I could love you. I thought I could be a good mother. I thought that if I just wanted it enough, it would come…"

Shelby feels like she is about to throw up with how closely this description matches her own story.

"But at some point you have to realize that you're beat. I'm a shitty mom. I shoulda given you all up when you were born. There woulda been plenty of nice ritch folks that woulda taken in a baby. Now it's too late for that. But at least you can take up. I know that you'll take good job of it."

"I'll try," Shelby says, now even more uncertain about her parenting abilities.

"You're going to do fine. I'll give away my rights. You just gotta bring the papers to me, 'cause I'm not smart enough to write that kinda stuff up, and I'm not dealing with no lawyer."

"Thank you," Shelby says with a weak smile.

"I'll take off now so that you can get the girls to school."

Shelby nods her head, and then just stands there in shock, staring at her mother as she drives away.

Shelby opens the door to find the two girls still standing in the entry way. She wonders if they heard everything that was said. She isn't even sure if she hopes they did or didn't. The line about never wanting kids, probably wouldn't be the best thing for them to hear. But maybe they needed to know that their mother wishes that she was a better mother as desperately as they did.

"Are you ok?" Becky Lynn asks.

Shelby nods her head, but she isn't even sure if that is true. Mostly she just feels sort of numb and shocked.

"So Mom said she doesn't want us?" Tammy asks.

Shelby kneels down to look her sister in the eye. Tammy has grown since the last time that she did this. She is now looking up at her sister when she is on her knees. "No, you mother said that she wanted to keep you. She wanted to keep you with all of her heart. But she knew that wasn't what was best for you. She knew that it would be far better for you if she let you go. So she decided to sacrifice herself, and let you stay with me."

Tammy quivers, "Is that ok with you?"

"Of course!" Shelby exclaims, enveloping her sister in a hug.

"We get to stay here? Forever?" Becky Lynn says starting to jump up and down.

"Yes, sweetie, now we are really, really, really, late, and we have to get the two of you to school before the whole day is over!" Shelby explains.

**Three Days Later**

It probably wasn't the woman's job. No, Shelby was pretty certain that this was far out of the woman's job description. But she was unbelievably grateful that the woman was willing to do it anyway.

"This is the form that your mother needs to sign. She's going to have to do it in front of a notary," the social worker says.

"Thanks, I'll take care of it," Shelby assures the women taking the forms out of her hand.

"I could take care of it if it's too painful for you," the social worker offers again.

"It's ok. This is a lot less than what I thought I was going to have to do to get custody of the girls. I'm happy to do this little thing."

**The Next Night**

Teal'c wanted to ask how the outing went as soon as Shelby returned from it three hours ago. But he knows that the little girls didn't know that Shelby went to see her mother. They are secure in the knowledge that they will be living with Teal'c and Shelby forever. He finds himself worried that this might not actually be happening, and certainly doesn't want to bring it up in front of the youngsters if it isn't.

It is only when the two of them are alone in their bedroom that he brings it up for the first time.

"Did your mother withdraw her previously made offer?"

"No, she signed the paper," Shelby says.

"In that case, we should have had a celebration during dinner."

"I didn't want to celebrate quite yet. I just want to make sure that this is permanent. Because if we turn this in and sign it, there is no going back."

"You are uncertain that you want to permanently provide care to your sisters?" he asks. He thought they had already settled this issue. Jaffa do not often change their minds, and he is unused to the way that humans must discuss things several times before they come to any decision that lasts.

"No, I'm in this. I might not be the perfect mom, but I'm what they've got, and I'm better than what they had."

"Then I do not understand your reluctance."

"I just wanted to make sure that you are ok with this."

"I have said on previous occasions that I am," Teal'c replies.

"Right, but you left Ryac."

"I have no intention to leave you," she says walking closer to her, and running the rough back of his hand across her cheek.

"So are you saying that you did have an intention to leave your son?"

"Of course not," Teal'c says.

"Than how can I trust you not to leave this time?" Shelby asks.

"I will not."

"But how do I know that?"

"Dray'auc would not have come with me to Earth."

"You didn't even ask her," Shelby whines.

"I did not need to ask her. When you have spent three decades married to someone, you can predict what answer they might have to any question."

"So why wouldn't you leave me?"

His mouth twists up in the tinniest smile. "You are far more noble than Dray'ac is."

"I don't know what you mean," she says.

"If I were to present you with two options: one of which entailed leaving every bit of comfort you were used to… our house, our money, or position in society, but which involved the morally correct course of action; the other of which entailed keeping those things and continuing to do wrong, you would choose the right."

"Of course."

"Dray'auc would not make that choice. She would not have followed me to Earth."

"So you're just assuming that I would follow you to another planet?"

"Am I incorrect in this assessment?"

"No," she says.

He looks at her with more love coming into his eyes than is common for Jaffa.

"But I don't really want to go to another planet."

"We will not unless it becomes necessary to preserve our moral integrity."

"Right, or maybe someday when the Goa'uld are gone and the Jaffa are free, we'll take the girls offworld to live."

"I am certain that the children will be grown and on their own by the time that the Jaffa nation is free."

"That might be true, but working toward the freedom of the Jaffa would not be a bad way to spend our lives."


	67. Part 6 Chapter 6

**One Month Later**

**Spoilers for "Rite of Passage"**

"Do you think we should let Cassie go out tonight?" Janet asks Daniel as the two prepare dinner using a newfound rhythm.

"It's her birthday. I know she didn't want us to throw a party for her… no matter how many times we asked. But I just couldn't let our little girl's birthday go completely uncelebrated."

"You do know she's going somewhere with Dominic, right?"

"Dominic? Who is this Dominic?" Daniel asks, dropping the spatula into the pan.

"Dominic is the boy our daughter has been hanging round with for some time," Janet says, reaching around her husband just in time to prevent the spatula from splattering sauce all over her kitchen.

"Cassie has a boyfriend? How did I not know that Cassie has a boyfriend?" Daniel asks in horror.

"He's not her boyfriend yet. He hasn't said anything official yet, although Cassie hopes he will soon."

"So wait a minute, you and Cassie have discussed her not-a-boyfriend?"

"At length."

"And you didn't think to tell me?" Daniel asks.

"I am telling you after being sworn to secrecy. I just found out Friday, and you've been offworld since then," she says, bestowing a little kiss on her husband's cheek.

"Thanks," he says. He picks up the spatula and continues stirring the sauce. "So we're just going to let her date then?" he asks.

"She's sixteen today, Daniel, that's old enough."

"I know, but shouldn't we meet him or something?"

"You mean, shouldn't we scare the pants off him or something?"

"Yeah, we could invite over all of SG-1," Daniel teases with a grin. His wife shakes her head at him, obviously not finding it funny. "Ok, but it wouldn't have to be like that. I feel like we should get to know anyone that our daughter is spending a lot of time with, especially if he's of the opposite gender."

"I can tell her to invite him over as long as you are going to play nice."

Daniel nods his head.

"And you have to pretend that you don't know anything about this until she tells you."

"Of course, I'm not going to rat you out, babe," he says.

"'Rat me out'? I think you have been hanging out with teenagers altogether too much."

-0-0-0-

"Cassandra!" Janet calls up the stairs. "I'm not imagining it; I mean, she was here, was she not?" she says to her husband, who is putting their son in his highchair.

"Yeah, but that only lasted until the presents ran out."

"Cassie!" Janet shouts up the stairs.

"What?" Cassie snots as she comes down the stairs, brushing her hair and wearing a lot more make-up than a family dinner requires.

"Speak to your mother with respect," Daniel says, pulling out one of those painfully parental lines he swore he was never going to use on his own kids.

"Make a wish!" Janet says in a cheerful voice.

"Dominic's waiting," Cassie sneers.

"Perfect, invite him in," Daniel says.

This earns him a glare from his wife.

"Mom! You said I could go." Cassie protests.

"Yeah, I did… after."

"We're meeting a bunch of people."

"Your mother told me you were sick when I was off world, so maybe we're going to change our minds and not let you go out with your _friends_ after all."

"Fine!" Cassie grumbles, spinning out of the room.

-0-0-0-

Cassie's stomach flutters when she catches sight of Dominic. She's had crushes before… mostly on people that she didn't get any closer too than a CD cover or a movie screen. But this was different, this time she had a crush on someone who talked to her, who listened to her, and walked her home while actually carrying her books like a scene for a movie in the 1950s.

She's been wondering lately if Dominic is going to be her first boyfriend. But he never says anything, not even when she not-so-subtlety hints. But she's not that into labels, and then NOT being called boyfriend and girlfriend might just keep Dominic away from the inquisition she's pretty sure her father has planned for him.

"They're not letting me leave yet, so, I mean, if you want to meet up with everybody then…" she says, trying to make everything sound very casual. She doesn't want Dominic to know how disappointed she is that she's being deprived of even half an hour of him.

"Wait a second… here. Happy Birthday," he says, handing her a box.

Her heart swells with joy. She doesn't even really care what's in the box. The fact that Dominic gave her a present bodes well for their future relationship. She opens it up to see a beautiful prism. "It's just like the ones from class," she says, remembering the science lab where he had been her partner. It was the first time the two of them had really talked, and that had been a month ago. Had he been planning this ever since then? Or, when he heard it was her birthday, had he though back to something she had told him so long ago to think of something to give her? Either possibility was amazing.

"Yeah, well, you… you said it was pretty, so… This one's for decoration, so… I thought you could put it in your room."

She holds it up to the porch light, and it scatters rainbows across both of their faces. He takes a step toward her, and she realizes he's about to kiss her. Panic mixed with elation rushes through her as their lips meet. Then the porch light blinks out, and Cassie feels herself falling to the floor .

Dominic calls her name, and when he can't get a response from her he screams for help into the house. Janet opens the door, and runs over to her daughter in full doctor mode. Olivia has the presence of mind to grab William as everyone else rushes out of the room. She is now standing with the toddler balanced on her hip. She's so small that the action causes her to stand completely unbalanced.

This leaves Daniel to question the boy. "What happened?!"

"Nothing! She just fell," Dominic says, completely panicked.

"She's running a temperature," Janet tells her husband, "What was she doing when she 'just fell'?"

"I… I kissed her," Dominic stammers, looking from one to the other of them.

"You what?" Daniel says, glaring at the boy.

"It's her birthday, all right? Look, I'm telling you! The light just exploded, and she just… passed out! That's what happened!"

"We need to get her to the infirmary," Janet says.

"Get in the car Livy, I'll grab my keys," Daniel says.

-0-0-0-

Daniel stares in horror at the video in front of him. There is a girl about his daughter's age, from his daughter's planet, having some sort of seizure. He's read the file, and knows that there was nothing that the team from Earth could do to stop it. The only way to stop it, according to the locals that were now extinct, was to let the sick teenager wander around in the woods by themselves. He can't let his daughter do that, especially considering that whatever she should be looking for easily could have stopped existing in the five years since people had lived on that planet.

He can do it, though. He can go out into the forest, and wander on her behalf, and hopefully bring back whatever it is that is going to make his little girl better.

-0-0-0-

Janet walks into Cassie's room, and is completely frantic when she sees that her daughter is not in the room. "Cassie?" She runs down the hallways to see her daughter staggering painfully down it, "Cassandra? What are you doing?!"

"I have to go…" the girl mutters.

"Honey, you're not well enough to go anywhere!" Janet says, trying to take her daughter by the arm and lead her back to the safety of her hospital bed. Cassie breaks away.

"I have to go into the forest!" Cassie demands.

Janet walks in front of her daughter, so she can look her in the face, "I need you to get back in bed, OK?"

"You're not my mother!" Cassie says bitterly.

"Okay, then what have I been to you these last few years?" Janet asks, having learned from years with an increasingly snotty daughter not to be offended by comments like this.

"You don't understand!" Cassie says, spitting out the typical teenage rebellion with a touch more truth than most can do it.

"OK, listen to me… if nothing else, I am your doctor, Cassandra, now let's go!" Janet says getting a grip on both of her daughter's arms with the intention of taking her daughter back to bed whether she wants to go or not.

"So what?" Cassie, says pushing her away.

"I care about what happens to you! Honey, don't you know what you mean to me?" Janet says letting some of her own insecurities come into play once again.

"Don't you get it? It doesn't matter!" Cassie snarls.

"It's the only thing that matters, please! Let me try and help you," Janet says, full of compassion.

"You can't! If you wanna help me, then leave me alone!" Cassie snarles.

"OK! Just hear me out. Let's get you back into bed, and then we'll talk. OK? SG-1'll be back soon…" Janet sooths.

Cassie shoves her mother against the wall with no small amount of force, "No! Leave me alone!"

Cassie makes a break for the elevators as her mother calls her name. A couple of airmen catch her, and they drag her back to the infirmary with her legs kicking uselessly in the air.

Cassie screams the word "no" again and again frantically under her breath, ending with a plea to be let free.

"I can't do that!" Janet says with tears coming to her eyes as her daughter manages to free herself from the grasp of the guards.

"You're killing me!" Cassie screams as the lights explode above her head.

-0-0-0-

"Hey, kid how are you feeling?" Daniel asks as he comes into his daughter's hospital room.

"I know what's happening to me."

"Oh, OK… What?" Daniel says having been taken completely by surprise.

"I'm changing… into something… and there's nothing you can do to stop it," Cassie says with a touch of pride in her voice.

"Hmm… you know how me and your mom feel when someone issues a challenge like that," Daniel says with a grin.

"You guys aren't really my parents. They died with Nirrti poisoned my village."

"We know that, just don't mention it around Janet."

"Why?"

"Because she loves you, and she deserves better. We all love you for that matter," he says rubbing her arm.

"That doesn't… change… anything," Cassie says.

Everything in him wants to tell her what kind of a shellfish brat she is being. That when he was hospitalized with a nasty flu when he was twelve years old he didn't get a single visitor. That Cassie sitting here with families and friends around her all the time is different from that. But he knows when Cassie has this teenage attitude on none of that is going to make a difference, so he doesn't say all the things he wants to he just quietly tells her, "You're wrong about that."

"It's different. I'm… different now. I can do things…" Cassie says opening her hand, and staring at the knight as it flies out of her hand.

"How did you do that?"

"I just… thought it. I thought I wanted a knight, and it… flew into my hand."

-0-0-0-

"Cassandra? What are you doing?" Janet asks alarmed when she walks into her daughter's room to see her spinning a knight in the air.

"It helps… to do this," she explains.

"How?" the doctor asks.

"It's almost like… the heat is leaving my body, and going into the chess piece. You haven't got a cure, have you?" she asks, looking at her mother quickly.

"No. We're still trying…" she says, wishing that she had better news for her daughter.

"It's all right!" Cassie says sharply, and angrily.

"No, it's not," Janet says, seeing through her daughter's anger and knowing that her daughter is disappointed in her, "But we are going to find the cure."

"I want this to happen, Janet," Cassie says.

"Don't say that," Janet pleads.

"It's going to happen anyway," Cassie says definitively.

"You're ill," Cassie says dismissively.

"You know that it's more than that now. I can feel a power inside me," she says spinning the knight, "This is only the beginning."

"And along with it, your body is undergoing an enormous physical strain," the doctor in Janet cautions her daughter.

"You think it's gonna kill me?" Cassie asks with concern.

"I'm… worried about that possibility, yes," Janet admits making the split second decision not to hide the truth from her daughter.

"I don't care!" Cassie shouts.

"Well, you should!" Janet says embarrassed by the way her voice is shaking with emotion when her daughter is not that involved in that conversation, "I know the limitations of the human body…"

"Maybe I'm not human anymore," Cassie says.

"Of course you are," Janet says shocked, and ever so slightly offended by the suggestion.

"Maybe dying is part of the transformation."

"I don't care whether it is or not!" Janet says with a furious voice, clearly ready to fight for her daughter. The knight falls out of the air. Janet reaches over to pick up the knight, but it burns her hand.

"I'm sorry," Cassie says quietly.

"Sweetheart, sometimes, when a person is sick, it's important for them to fight. I want you to fight this, OK?" Janet says, hoping that her daughter's calmer demander means that she is going to be willing to listen to reason. She gently strokes her daughter's hair.

Cassie looks at her mother for a brief moment before making the knight rise up again, and starts spinning it in the air.


	68. Part 6 Chapter 7

Daniel and Janet walk down the hallway together. "What are we going to do with this Goa'uld?" Janet asks her husband.

"She says she can help Cassandra," Daniel says.

"If we trust her," Janet says, with obvious sarcasm in her voice. She can't stand the idea of her daughter's life and safety being in the hand of the person who very nearly destroyed her daughter's entire culture.

"No, if we let her go," Daniel says frankly.

"Do you believe she can actually help?" Janet asks, examining her husband's face.

"Well, seeing as we don't have a choice… I guess it's worth a shot," Daniel says.

"What about General Hammond? What's he gonna do?" Janet asks.

"He hasn't decided yet," Daniel says.

She stops walking, and says, "I really need to get back to see Cassandra."

"It's going to be ok," Daniel says, pulling her into a hug. Janet nearly breaks into tears.

-0-0-0-

The decision is taking too long. If it doesn't get made now, Cassie might die anyway. So Janet decides to take matters into her own hands.

"General Hammond wanted me to check on the prisoner," she lies to the guard. He nods his head, and opens the door for her.

She walks in and levies her gun at the woman before her, and tells her in a voice with fewer shakes than she expected, "You are going to save my daughter right now."

By the time that the guard's called for reinforcements. the hand that she used to hold the gun straight out in front of her is so tired that it had to be replaced with two hands.

"Doctor Fraiser, stand down," the Generals voice says.

"I can't do that, sir. I don't have a choice," she says, her voice starting to shake.

"Honey, you can't do this," Daniel says softly.

"We can't… help Cassandra. She can," Janet pleads.

"Doctor Fraiser, your husband and his team has already convinced me to make a deal for Cassandra's life. This isn't necessary," General Hammond says.

"Then you agree to my terms?" Nirrti says with a grin on her face.

"Just one… once you've cured Cassandra of her illness, you'll be free to go," Hammond replies.

"And how do I know you will honor this?" Nirrti asks.

"You have only my word," Hammond says with a booming voice that makes it hard to doubt that his word alone would be enough.

Still Nirrti doubts it, and says, "Not enough."

"Then, shall I remind you that the woman holding the gun on you is Cassandra's mother?" he asks. Daniel's arm goes under her elbow. He knew without asking that her arm is burning from the strain of holding the heavy gun. He is willing to help her with the physical as well as moral implications of this decision.

Nirrti stands up. There is still a chance that they could save her daughter.

-0-0-0-

Janet is back to working on Cassie. But it's different this time. She isn't fighting a losing battle to save her daughter's life. She's just holding off death until the cure arrives. The cure walks in, and looks at her daughter with a touch of distain in her eyes. She is handed the healing device, and Nirrti puts it on her hand, and holds it over the teenage girl. It glows white, but goes dead altogether too soon.

"You have waited too long."

"You try again," Janet demands.

Nirrti looks at her, and knows that this face is nothing to mess with. She tries it again, and Cassie starts coughing.

"It is done," Nirrti says, handing the healing device to one of the people nearby. The monitors are making beeps which mean that everything is returning to normal. Cassie takes in a sharp breath, and pulls the mask off her face, feeling that it would be easier to breath without it, even though the opposite is true. "Mom? Dad?" she asks, sounding groggy, and using names for her parents that she hasn't used since she got sick. In fact, she hasn't been calling them by those terms of endearment much since she became a teenager.

"It's OK. I'm here," Janet says, with a voice shaking with emotion.

**The Next Day**

"Hey, honey, how is our girl?" Daniel asks his wife as he walks into the room.

"Bored," Cassie says as Daniel sits down at the end of the bed.

"She's still has to do a lot of that homework. Other than that, she's just fine. We get to take her home tonight."

"Glad to hear it, Livvy and Will will be glad to have their sister back."

"Yeah, I'll be glad to be out of this concrete place."

"Right, you probably want to get back to Dominic."

"Dad," Cassie says, her cheeks turning red.

"So you kissed," Daniel says.

Cassie fidgets.

"Hey, it's ok, kissing is normal at your age. I just want to meet him, have him come to dinner before you date him again."

"We're not dating," Cassie says quickly.

"But you are kissing," Daniel says with his eyebrows raised.

Cassie nods her head.

"Ok, so we need to meet the boys that you're kissing," Daniel says, "Especially the ones that you are kissing with fireworks in the background," he teases, nudging his shoulder against his daughter's.

"Is this going to be an interrogation?" Cassie asks suspiciously.

"Nope," her father promises.

Cassie raises her eyebrows at him, "So you're not going to do anything to embarrass me?"

"Oh, I'll probably do something to embarrass you, but I won't do it on purpose," Daniel says with a smile.

Cassie leans her head onto his shoulder, partly because her illness has still left her pretty sick, and partly because this whole conversation was far less awkward than she'd been thinking it was going to be.

**One Week Later**

"Hello, sir," Dominic says, looking very nervous as Daniel opens the door, holding on to his toddler son.

"Come on in," he says, smiling at the boy.

"Cassie said that you're in the Air Force or something, right?"

"Well I work for the air force, but I'm certainly not a soldier. Relax, I'm not going to be cleaning my Beretta while I have a serious talk with you. I just want to get to know all of Cassie's friends, particularly her good friends."

"Friends?" Dominic asked, standing stock-still in the hallway for a second. Daniel just barely manages to keep the grin inside. That was exactly the reaction that he was hoping for.

"That's what my daughter tells me," he says.

"Oh," Dominic says, looking disappointed.

Now Daniel is starting to worry that he's done more harm than good. He knows that his daughter would never forgive him if he scared away her first boyfriend before he even became a boyfriend, "It didn't sound like she was particularly happy with the word," Daniel adds. He calls up the stairs of the house, "Hey, Cass, Dominic is here."

Cassie runs down most of the stairs, and then pauses on the last one, embarrassed to have been caught running down the stairs to him.

"Hi," Dominic says.

"Hi," Cassie says with a goofy grin on her face.

"I'm going to go help your mother with dinner. Can you watch your brother for me?" Daniel asks.

"Sure," Cassie says, taking the boy out of her father's arms. Will wiggles to get down, and she lets him.

"Sorry we're babysitting," she says with a roll of her eyes that is very teenager.

"That's ok, we've just got to make sure that the kid doesn't do anything stupid, right? I still get to spend time with my girlfriend."

"Girlfriend?" Cassie asks, snapping her head to look at Dominic.

"Is that ok?" he asks insecurely.

"It's great," she says, a huge goofy grin on her face.

"Are you feeling better?" he asks.

"Yeah, that whole illness thing was just… dumb. Don't worry, it's not going to happen again, and it's certainly not contagious."

"I'm just glad you're feeling better. I kind of felt like it was my fault."

"It definitely wasn't."

"Well, I mean it happened right when we kissed…"

"Well, any strong emotion would have triggered it," she confesses.

"Strong emotion," he says, causing her to blush. "I feel strongly about you, too," he says, making her face break out in a giant grin.

He reaches over to her hand which is resting on her knee, and takes it into his own.

"Sissy," Will says, crawling toward his sister.

"What's wrong, little man?" Dominic asks, taking the boy onto his knee. The little kid puts out his hands.

"He wants to play patty cakes," Cassie says, blushing at her brother's behavior. Pretty much anything that her family did would be completely humiliating to Cassie.

Dominic starts to play with the kid. Olivia walks down the stairs in the middle of the game. Seeing her sister with her boyfriend she tries to run through the room as quickly as she can.

"Is this the little sister that I've heard so much about?" Dominic asks.

"She called me her sister?" Olivia asks in surprise.

"She's not your sister?" Dominic asks Cassie, confused.

"Not biologically. We're both adopted. Or at least, she's going to be adopted before too long," Cassie explains.

"Get out of town, you are adopted? You never told me that," Dominic says to Cassie. Then he turns to the smaller girl, "You can hang out with us 'til dinner if you want. Of course, it looked like you had somewhere pretty serious to go, so you don't have to."

Olivia smiles, "I just didn't want to get in the way."

Cassie knows that a lot of the group homes that her sister was in made Olivia feel like she was a huge inconvenience. "You're never in my way, little one," she says, patting the couch next to her.

"We were just in the middle of a game of patty cake," Dominic says with an overexcited face for the little boy, who is more than a little miffed at having his game interrupted, and who looks like he is about to begin a huge wail.

Janet peaks into the room, and her heart swells with pride with the last part of the conversation. She returns to the kitchen, and her husband, "He's really great with kids."

"Well, hopefully, he won't be displaying that attribute on our grandkids anytime soon," Daniel says.

"Don't even joke," Janet says, giving her husband a light smack on his shoulder.

"I can't help it. I don't really like the idea of my daughter dating."

"I'm not a huge fan, either. But I really like the guy that she chose to date," Janet points out.

"Agreed," Daniel says with a little reluctance.


	69. Part 6 Chapter 8

**Two Week Later**

"Get up, Tammy!" Shelby says, knocking on the door of her sister's room. She and Teal'c got a house a couple of weeks ago.

"Sissy, can you make me the 'tarts like Teal'c does?" Becky Lynn asks.

"Tarts? He made you tarts? For breakfast?" Shelby says, more shocked about her husband cooking than about anything else.

"Yeah!" Becky Lynn says with a grin.

"Well, I don't have time to bake. Your sister is still not out of bed. Go eat some cereal."

"I want a 'tart! Teal'c would make me a 'tart!" Becky Lynn protests.

"Well, Teal'c is traveling, and I'm your sister; go eat," Shelby says, opening her door.

"I don't feel good," Tammy protests.

Shelby sits down on the edge of her sister's bed, and feels her forehead, "What kind of sick are you?"

"My stomach hurts."

"Well, you don't have a fever. Are you nervous about something, honey?" Shelby asks softly.

"No, I'm just sick," Tammy says.

"I can't stay home today, it's going to be busy at work. Come on, you can get to school."

"Please, let me stay home today."

"You can't say home alone."

"Mommy used to let us all the time."

"Well, I'm not Mommy," Shelby says, "Come on, I'll bring you a couple of tums and you're going to be fine."

Tammy pulls the covers over her head, but doesn't say any words of protest.

Shelby heads back into the kitchen where she finds her youngest sister chomping merrily away on a pop-tart.

"Tarts taste good cold," she says cheerfully.

"Teal'c made you a pop tart. Yeah, that actually makes a lot more sense. Do you want me to warm it up for you?"

Becky Lynn nods her head eagerly.

Shelby takes the uneaten pop-tart from her sister, and puts it in the toaster. Just before she puts it down, she remembers that her other sister could do with a piece of dry toast, and she puts a piece of bread in the toaster. She pulls the slot down, and turns back to her little sister only to see a look of despair painted on the small face before her eyes.

"Teal'c uses the microwave," Becky Lynn protests.

"But pop tarts are made to go in the toaster," Shelby says.

Tammy Lynn doesn't say anything she just sticks out her bottom lip. Shelby grabs another pop tart, and puts it on a paper towel in the microwave. She grabs a couple of tums, and heads back to Becky Lynn, who has gotten out of bed, and pulled some clothes on.

"Feeling better?" Shelby asks.

"Whatever," Tammy replies.

That word feels Shelby with quiet despair. After all, she is far from mastering parenting children, and she is far from ready to parent a teenager. She's seen Daniel and Janet deal with Cassie during team nights, and she's pretty sure all of the whatevers and eye-rolling would drive her batty. Tammy isn't going to be a teenager for a couple more years, at least not technically, and if she starts this early Shelby isn't sure if she's going to be able to endure it.

"Ok, well grab your stuff, and we can eat the toast in the car. We're late again."

-0-0-0-

"Shelby, there is a phone call for you!" one of the other nurses call out.

Shelby finishes drawing and labeling the blood from her patient before coming over and taking the phone out of the woman's hand.

"Hello," she says.

"Are you the mother of Tamara Dunn?"

"I'm her legal guardian. I'm her sister, Shelby Dunn."

"She asked me not to make this call, said you were too busy to come and get her. But I feel so sorry for her. She don't feel one bit of good, and she's gotten sick all over her clothes."

"She got sick. I'll be right there to pick her up," Shelby said hanging up the phone.

She walks into Janet's office, "Tammy is sick, and I've got to go take care of her."

"Of course you do," Janet says. Then she sees the young woman's face. "What's wrong?"

"She told me she was sick this morning, and I didn't believe her. What kind of nurse am I if I can't even tell when my own sister is sick?"

"It's a lot harder to tell if your family members are sick then a patient. You're not emotionally invested in a patient," Janet giggles, "Well, here, you usually are. The point is you can do everything right, and still arrive at a wrong diagnosis, even if you were the best nurse in the history of nurses. Trust me, you're not the first mom to send a sick kid off to school, and it certainly wasn't anything life-threatening."

"She threw up."

"Kids throw up. You're a good mother. Now go take care of her."

"Thanks," Shelby says heading out of the room.

-0-0-0-

"Hi, I'm Tammy's guardian, is she with the nurse or something?" Shelby asks awkwardly as she stands in the office, "I should know where the nurse office is shouldn't I?"

"We actually don't have a nurse at this school. Tammy is just lying down in our waiting area."

"Well, I should have known that you guys didn't have a nurse. I'm really new to this whole parenting thing. I promise that I'm going to get better."

"You're fine. You can go see her now," the women says, gesturing toward a doorway.

The sight that Shelby sees next absolutely melts her heart. The girl is sprawled across three hard plastic chairs with her eyes closed, although she is not sleeping. Her shirt has been scrubbed but bears the undeniable remains of vomit, and the scrubbing has done very little to get rid of the smell.

"Tam?" Shelby asks softly.

"You came," Tammy says, completely surprised by this development.

"Of course I came. You were sick. I brought you an extra pair of my scrubs. They'll be ridiculously big on you, but I didn't have anything else with me at work, and I didn't know if you would want to change before you went home."

"I just want to go home," Tammy says, sounding very small.

"Ok," Shelby says offering her a big smile.

Shelby returns to the secretary, and signs her sister out. When the two of them are walking out of the school, Shelby says, "Do you feel like you need to go to the doctor?"

"No, you can just drop me off at home and go back to work."

"That isn't going to happen."

"I'm eleven. By the time you were eleven, you were looking after Becky Lynn and I."

"Well, Teal'c and I are going to wait until you're a couple of years older before we start leaving you alone, and I'm certainly not going to leave you alone when you're sick."

"Sorry you lost a day's work."

"You are way more important than a day's work. I'm sorry that I didn't believe you were sick the first time that you told me you were," Shelby says.

"It's ok," Tammy says.

Shelby doesn't buy it, but by then they have both gotten into the car, and Tammy lays her head on the coolness of the window, so Shelby lets her rest.

-0-0-0-

"Are you feeling better?" Shelby asks as soon as Tammy is situated in her bed in clean pajamas with a trash can next to her. Tammy nods as her sister inserts a thermometer into her mouth. Shelby is relieved to see after the beep that her little sister has an absolutely normal temperature.

"Do you want something to eat?"

Tammy scrunches up her nose at the thought.

"Dry toast? Ice chips? A glass of water?"

"Crackers?"

"Sure," Shelby says, standing up. Then she grimaces, and sits back down on the edge of the bed, "Actually, we don't have any saltines. What kind of parent doesn't have saltines?"

"Whatever you have is fine," Tammy says.

-0-0-0-

Shelby lays down on the bed next to Tammy, as her little sister eats her crackers, "Just tell me if you want me to leave so you can get some sleep."

"You took the day off work so you can be with me. I guess the least I can do is actually let you be with me."

"Honey, don't feel bad about it."

"Mom never did that," Tammy says bashfully.

"There are a lot of things that mom didn't do. I'm really sorry that I didn't listen to you. The next time you tell me you can't go to school, I'm going to believe you."

"Ok, I can't go to school tomorrow."

"We'll see if you feel better by then."

"I'm so embarrassed. I never want to go back to that school."

"What happened?" Shelby asks.

"I threw up all over a boy," she says, hiding her face.

"Oh, honey, I'm so sorry!"

"And he was the one that I had a crush on," Tammy says, completely mortified.

"Wait, are you old enough to like boy?"

Tammy rolls her eyes.

"I really wish I'd kept you home from school today. I'm not very good at this taking care of kids thing, but I'll try to get better."

Tammy lays the crackers she's been snacking on on the night stand, and curls up next to her sister. "You're here, and that seems pretty good to me."

Shelby smiles at her, "I love you," say says, and she wipes the hair away from her face.

Tammy smiles at her without opening her eyes, "I love you too, and you're the best big sister I could ever hope to have."

-0-0-0-

Teal'c rushes into the house looing completely frantic, "I heard that Tammy has undergone some illness, and was sent away from her educational institute."

"She's fine, it's just a bit of the flu."

"Has she been examined by a doctor?"

"No, but I'm a nurse."

"You are a nurse which sent a sick child to school," Teal'c says. This information had been given to him by Janet in an attempt to make him more sensitive to his wife's feelings. The attempt failed.

"I know, but she's fine, really," Shelby says.

"I really am," Tammy says, grinning at her guardian from the couch.

"I think we should provide her with a symbiote," Teal'c says seriously.

"Classified!" Shelby shouts.

"She should not have to endure discomfort," Teal'c says.

"She also shouldn't have to endure the… side effects of what you're suggesting, besides it's not like we've got a whole bunch of those things just laying around."

"What is Teal'c talking about?" Tammy asks.

"There is an experimental treatment that Teal'c wants you to have," Shelby lies, "But it's not a treatment for the stomach flu," she says, glaring at her husband.

"Would we ever consider this treatment if she had something more serious?" Teal'c says.

"If one of their lives were at risk, we would talk about it," she says.

"I did not before know that you were so opposed to something that is a part of me," he says grumpily.

"Well, I'm not opposed to you," she says, giving him a peck on the lips.


	70. Part 6 Chapter 9

Shelby walks out of the bedroom. "Girls!" she calls. Neither of them actually went to their rooms. They're standing, terrified, just a bit down the hallway. "I'm sorry about before. I shouldn't have told you to go pack."

"I don't want Teal'c to leave," Becky whines.

"I am not going anywhere," Teal'c informs them.

"Well, except to go get Rya'c tomorrow," Shelby adds.

Tammy is looking her big sister up and down, obviously confused.

"Honey?" Shelby asks her sister.

"I don't understand, you had a fight," the girl says in shock.

"Yes, that happens sometimes, adults have fights. I shouldn't have included you guys in it," Shelby says.

"But you had a fight, and Teal'c didn't hurt you, and no-one is leaving," the girl says in a voice which is clearly puzzled.

Teal'c's heart breaks within him. He can't stand the thought of this girl being so puzzled by something which is so natural, so obvious to him.

"Well, Tammy, that is the way things should turn out when adults fight. And I want you to know Teal'c isn't going to hurt me, and he isn't going to leave us."

"And you're not going to leave?" Becky asks nervously.

"No, I'm not going to leave either. Because we're family, and families stick together, forever, no matter what," Shelby says, looking at her husband with eyes full of apology.

"And that is the same reason why I will retrieve your brother tomorrow," Teal'c says.

"And he's an alien, too?" Becky asks, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet.

"Keep in mind that from his point of view you're the alien," Shelby points out.

"That's a wild thought!" Becky says with a grin. Then she wanders off, singing, "I am an alien. You are an alien. Let's all be aliens together!" in a sing song voice.

Shelby can tell that her other sister is going to need just a bit more reassurance, so she walks over, and pulls her into a big hug.

"I can really trust it? It's not going to fall apart?" the girl whispers, almost below the level that Shelby can hear.

"Yeah, you can," Shelby whispers back, just as quietly.

-0-0-0-

"Where is your mom?" Daniel asks as he comes in to see Cassie cooking dinner. Ever since the teenager got her license last year, she's been picking up her siblings from school, or daycare when it's not Will's preschool day, and watching until five her mother got home from work.

But Daniel had to work until eight tonight, and Janet still isn't home.

"I don't know," the teenager says without much care.

"What do you mean, you don't know! Didn't she come home?"

"Relax! She was home, and then she left a little bit ago."

"Did she say where she was going?"

"I don't know," the teenager says with another shrug.

Daniel grabs the phone, and tries the family cell phone*. He told Janet to take it with her if she ever went somewhere late at night. The phone rings on the counter.

"Da…" Daniel begins to swear, but sees six children's eyes focused on him, "… nabit," he finishes. Daniel is debating just going and looking for his wife, when he sees that Olivia has solved all of her story problem math homework problems wrong, and that supper is just about done, and after that Will will need to be put to sleep. So he shoves the worry down in his stomach, and goes to work.

-0-0-0-

Daniel doesn't hear Janet come home. He's up to his elbows in suds at the time. It's only when he enters the hallway with his son in his arms that he sees her.

"Hey, where were you?" he asks.

"Shopping," she says with a huge grin on her face as she slips past him, and goes Will's room.

"Ok, well, next time, tell your husband, because Cassie isn't great with the passing on messages."

"Well, that makes sense, she isn't so great with the listening," Janet says with a laugh.

Will starts to squirm in his arms, and Daniel sets the boy down to get him into his pajamas. "What'd you get our boy?" he asks looking toward the bags his wife brought home.

"Well, it could be for our girl, too," Janet says.

"Olivia?" Daniel asks. Why is his wife buying something for their eleven year old at a baby store?

Janet pulls out a tiny onesie.

Daniel talks to Will, "Is mommy being silly? You can't fit into that!" Then his eyes widen, and he looks up at his wife. She nods. He stands up to give her a hug.

"Daddy, jamblers!" Will demands.

"We'll be happy more later," Daniel says to his wife before turning back to his son.

**The Next Day**

Shelby stands at the window, watching as their car pulls into the driveway. Rya'c gets out, and makes some comment which, judging by his facial expression, isn't an entirely upbeat one.

Shelby takes a deep breath and opens the door.

Rya'c stares at her stomach. "Is she with child?" he asks in the tone that American teenagers usually reserve for something a bit more crude.

"Yes, my wife is bearing my twins," Teal'c replies.

"You didn't tell him I was pregnant before?" Shelby asks.

"We were kind of fighting a battle," Rya'c sneers.

"Speak respectfully to your stepmother," Teal'c says.

"Speak respectfully to your stepmother," Rya'c mocks.

"Rya'c!" Teal'c says fiercely.

The kid hangs his head, and walks into the house.

"We are in for a fun week," Shelby says. Teal'c doesn't say anything, he just gives her shoulder a squeeze.

"Hi, I'm your new sister," Becky says cheerfully.

"No, you're not, you're my dad's second wife's little sister. That makes us nothing," he says.

"But we're going to live in the same house now, and my Teal'c is your Daddy, so that makes you my brother," the girl says with confidence.

"No, that makes us roommates."

"Well, speaking of rooms, I'll show you to yours," Shelby says.

"I have a room?" Ray'c asks.

"When we first procured this house, Shelby insisted on preparing a room for any visits you might make."

Rya'c's face has that hungry look on it that Sheby's seen in the mirror. The look of someone who doesn't expect love, and gets just a little scrap of it. But the look disappears as quickly as it appears. The kid is much too proud to admit he is touched.

"It's downstairs."

"In the dungeon?" Rya'c says sarcastically.

"If you're in the dungeon, so am I," Tammy says, coming up the stairs at the sound of the commotion.

"Ah, the other midget roommate," Rya'c says.

"I'm not a midget," Tammy objects.

"Right, well, I'm all gate-lagged, and need to kel-no-reem, so where is this room?" Rya'c says.

"Right, the bed was a stupid move, because you don't sleep," Shelby says, flinching.

"What?" the two girls ask, turning toward the teenager.

"Jaffa don't sleep. You guys don't even know that? Seriously, you're stupid," he mutters.

"Hey, you do not call them that!" Shelby scolds.

"Ok, then I'll just call you that," Rya'c says.

Teal'c raises his hand to give his son a quick smack on the back of his head. Shelby stops the hand in midair. "We do not hit in this family."

"Let me get this straight. I can't be punished, and the boss is this girl? This is going to be a fun experience," Rya'c says.

"If you think my range of punishment only exists in the physical realm you are mistaken, and Shelby is not a girl, but a women."

"Really, because she was six when I was born. Not exactly a mother-figure."

"But you will treat her as you treated your mother, doing anything else would dishonor the way that your mother raised you. Did your mother raise you to treat women as if they were nothing?"

Rya'c eyes well up. "I am sorry, father."

Teal'c looks at Shelby, pointing.

"Ah… I'm sorry…" He pauses, obviously not sure what to call her when he's not being sarcastic and crass.

"It's ok if you want to call me Shelby, my sisters do," Shelby prompts.

"Thanks," Rya'c says, with those hungry eyes from before.

"When we moved into his house, I acquired mats and candles for your kel-no-reem. They are in the closet of your room," Teal'c says.

"So you guys never sleep?" Becky asks, amazed.

"No, they only need to meditate for a few hours a night," Shelby says.

"I want to be a Jaffa," Becky proclaims.

"You want them to put an evil parasitic alien in your stomach?" Rya'c asks her.

"We didn't exactly share that part with the girls," Shelby says with a flinch.

"I didn't understand all those words, but they sounded bad. They're bad, right? You've got something bad in your stomachs?" Becky asks.

"Dude, you're an alien with another alien inside?" Tammy says, looking terrified.

"I'll show you," Rya'c says.

"Oh, there will be no symbiote displays," Shelby says.

"Or?" Rya'c challenges.

"Or you will be required to scrub the floors," Teal'c says with a brow-raise.

"Seriously?" Rya'c says.

Teal'c nods.

"Fine!" Rya'c says, storming down the stairs.

"You are a REALLY good parent," Shelby whispers to Teal'c.

"I'll get you the book I read," he whispers back.

"I just wish I didn't have to sleep so I could get all of this figured out faster," she says.

***Remember people, this story is based in our recent past when it was more common for a family rather than a person to own a cell phone.**

**Snotty teenagers are fun to write, although NOT fun to deal with.**


	71. Part 6 Chapter 10

**A Month Later**

"What happened?" Sam says, placing her hand on her son's face to tilt it up so she can see his face better as he walks out of the hockey room.

"I got hurt in the hockey game," he says, pushing past his mother quickly.

"No, you didn't. I know, because I just watched your hockey game," Sam says.

"I told you what happened, mom," the kid says, walking faster.

Sam rushes after him, but Jack grabs onto her elbow.

"Later," he mouths to her.

-0-0-0-

Jack goes into the house, and grabs frozen peas to throw at his son. Ty catches it, and applies it to his blackening eye.

"Why?" Jack asks.

Ty doesn't say anything.

"Did someone hit you, honey?" Sam asks.

"Of course someone hit him! I just want to know why my son got beat up in the locker room," Jack says.

Ty looks down at the floor, "They didn't beat me up."

"Why?" Jack says, lowering himself down on his knees so he is in his son's field of vision.

"They called me a queer," Ty says.

"Give me their names," Sam says.

"No," Ty says.

"Honey, I'm just going to tell the coach."

"Then I'll be a queer tattle tale," Ty moans.

"What were you doing when it happened?" Jack asks.

"It doesn't matter, Jack! There is nothing our son could do that would those kids were justified in beating him up," Sam says glaring at her husband.

"I totally agree. But the only way that we're going to ensure he _doesn't_ get beat up again is to figure out what set them off or quit hockey," Jack says glancing over his shoulder at his wife.

"I don't want to quit hockey," Ty says.

"You're not quitting anything, honey, not even if I have to beat up those pint-sized enemies myself," Sam threatens.

"What happened right before this, son," Jack asks.

"I was putting on hair gel," Ty says.

"Because of the helmet hair," Sam says sadly.

"How about you fix your hair at home from now on?" Jack says, smiling at his son.

Ty nods his head, and Jack gets off his knees. He starts down the hallway.

"What? That's all?" Sam says, running after her husband. She waits until they have made it into their bedroom before she hisses at her husband, "Our son just got beat up and your solution is for _him_ to change?"

"It's going to solve the problem, Sam," Jack says with a shrug, "And it's not like we're asking him to make a big change."

"It is not going to solve the problem!"

"Oh, come on, they're eight! They're going to be onto the next odd thing a kid does in like eight seconds."

"Yeah, well, the next oddball could also be our son! Or one of our daughters! Or someone else's kids! They are bullies, and we have to do something about it."

"Sam," Jack says trying to calm her.

"They hurt my baby," Sam says.

And then he gets it. He pulls her into his arms, "This isn't like when he was a baby."

Sam's body goes ridged in his arms, "It sure as hell is someone beating up my baby again, and I sure as hell am not going to stand by and let it happen again."

"What happened to me when I was a baby?" Ty says.

Sam and Jack turn to him in horror.

He just stares back at him.

"Baby, it was a long time ago," Sam says.

Ty just stares at him.

"Kiddo, when you were a baby your mommy, worked," Jack says.

"And Grandpa took care of me," Ty says with confidence.

"Not when you were a baby, sweetie. Grandpa was still working back then, so I hired someone to take care of you," Sam says.

"Like when Emma 'n me used to go to day care 'cause Grandpa was sick," he offers.

"Right, except this lady just came into the house, and she just took care of you."

"That's pretty special," Ty says with a smile on his face.

"Honey, she hurt you, and she didn't feed you," Sam says, crying a little.

Jack reaches over to rub his wife's back, and almost missed the emotional distress of his son. But Sam doesn't. She rushes forward to scoop him into her arms. "Honey, Mommy is so sorry. I didn't know she was hurting you, and I got you away from her the second that I knew."

"Was I bad?" Ty asks.

"Of course not!" Jack says, maneuvering in the hallway so that he can wrap his arms around both his wife and son. It causes him to be in an incredibly awkward position in the hallway, but he doesn't care.

"But this time I got beat up because I care about what my hair looks like. What did I do then to make her hurt me?"

"Babe, that is not how it works…" Sam begins.

"No, I've got this one. I'm the one who got him confused," Jack says. Sam lowers her son to the floor, and Jack sits down on the floor, and pulls his son onto his lap. "You didn't do anything wrong in the locker room today. And you certainly didn't do anything wrong when you were a little one-year-old getting starved and beaten by a women who was supposed to take care of you. There are bad people in the world. And they don't need a reason to hurt people."

"Did I cry a lot?" Ty asks his father suspiciously.

"Honey, I didn't actually know you then," Jack says.

"I forgot," Ty says.

"Well, I didn't," Jack says sadly.

"I did, honey, and you were a good baby. You were the best baby that I could have hoped for. You cried when you needed something, and you stayed quiet when you didn't need something. Snuggling you was the most amazing thing. You were perfect," she says, sinking down on the floor next to her son.

"Daddy, your Daddy hurt you, didn't he?" Ty asks, turning to look up at his father.

"Yeah, he did once."

Ty thinks a little longer, "But you weren't bad?"

"No, honey, you did nothing to deserve this, and we're going to talk to your coach in the morning. Your mom is right. No-one deserves to be picked on by a bully."

Ty bites his lips, "Dad, it's ok to hurt bad people, right?"

Jack frantically look at his wife for guidance in the answering of the question, but she seems to have no more idea where her son is going with this than he does.

"It's not nice to hurt people," he says, deciding to go with a very simple elementary-school answer.

"But you and Mommy and Grandpa are all soldiers, and you fought bad people in the war," Ty protests.

"Well, that's different," Jack says.

"How come?" Ty asks cheerfully.

"Well, because we weren't the people deciding that they were the bad guys. When one person gets to decide who is good and bad, and punish the bad people, it's too much power for them. It's much better when the power gets spread out among a whole bunch of people. Like with the military: the general tells the other officers what to do, and then they tell the enlisted people, and then they do it. So if one of those people makes the wrong choice, you don't accidently hurt a good person."

"It's the same with cops. They don't hurt the bad guy, they just take them to a prison where judges and lawyers and juries decide if they are good or bad," Sam adds.

"So, will you guys tell me if it's ok to hurt a bully?" Ty asks, looking up at his parents with absolute trust in his little face.

Jack bites his lip, and looks at his wife.

"Jack, we can't tell him to beat up a bully," she says.

"Sam, can you honestly tell me you never took some bully down a peg back when you were in school?" he asks.

"Jack, he's eight, he could get hurt," Sam says, glaring at her husband over her son's head.

"Nuh-uh, Mommy; I can beat them all," he says, puffing out his chest in pride.

"Of course you can," Jack says proudly.

"But honey, don't do anything more to someone than they do to them. If they're only a bully with words, then you fight back with just words. If they fight with their fists, then," Sam says, taking her son's fist in her hand.

"But don't get caught," Jack adds.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure there isn't a school around which shares our policy," Sam adds.

"Ty, I love you so much. I am so proud of you, and I don't want you to be any different than you are. I mean earlier, I was wrong. But even then I just said that, because I wanted you to be safe. It wasn't because there is anything wrong with your hair," Jack says running his fingers through his son's hair.

"Dad," Ty elongates the word, pulling his head away shocked that his father would dare to muss his perfect hairdo.

"And I really wish I'd been there when you were little," Jack says.

"And I just wish your babysitter hadn't been," Sam says.

"It's ok, Mommy, you kept me safe," Ty says, climbing onto his mother's lap.

"I didn't keep you safe. She broke your arm," Sam says, running her hand over her son's arm in a way that reminds Jack of the way she used to do it when he had a nightmare when he was just a little boy. It's not something that Jack wanted to ever see again.

"But my arm's better now," Ty says, pulling it straight.

"Yeah, it is," Sam says, kissing his temple.

Ty pauses as he thinks, "Do you think that the reason I am messed up is because of what happened to me?"

"You're not messed up," Jack says.

"You're perfect, just like you were when you were a baby," Sam agrees.

Ty lets out a contented sigh. It's comforting to have people who think you are perfect. Even when you know that you are not.


	72. Part 6 Chapter 11

**Three Months Later**

** "**You guys have got to see this show!" Olivia giggles as she puts a tape into the DVD player.

"What is it?" Ty asks as the rest of the children of SG-1 assemble themselves on the furniture in the O'Neill's basement rec room. The parents are playing cards upstairs, and the kids went downstairs to "play".

Olivia presses play and four people are ducking around giant fake rocks as cheesy special effects go off.

"What show is this?" Becky Lynn asks.

"Some cheesy sci fi," Cassie says, rolling her eyes. She is really wishing she would have stayed upstairs now. Maybe they would have let her. Or maybe she could have just sat in the kitchen and read a book or something, pretty much anything would be better than hanging out with these _children._

"No, you guys, have to watch this. You're going to see it! I swear!" Olivia says, practically bouncing up and down.

The opening credits are over by this point, and Colonel Danning says, "As a matter of fact, it DOES say Colonel on my uniform," proudly.

"Oh my God!" Cassie says, with her eyes bulging.

"What?" Hannah asks.

"It's dad!" Ty exclaims.

"It is not," Hannah says, confused.

Cassie grabs the remote out of her sister's hand, and says, "Where did you find this?"

"In our basement," Olivia says, as if it was completely obvious.

"Ok, they either have to stop letting you down there, or stop bringing home classified crap. We can't let them watch this!" Cassie says.

"Duh, it's not classified. It's going to be on TV," Olivia snarks at her sister.

"Yeah, I've seen commercials advertising this. It's supposed to be the 'most x-tream' adventure," Tammy says.

"No way is the Air Force actually going to let it air," Cassie says.

"Well, we have our own private viewing," Olivia says with a wicked grin.

"I'm not sure everyone in this room is exactly privy to this classified information," Cassie says looking around the room.

"Well, if it's going to be on TV, what's the harm?" Olivia says.

"The harm is most of the viewing audience isn't about to see their parents on the TV," Cassie argues.

"This is a show about our parents?" Becky Lynn asks, confused.

"Well, like, your brother-in-law, or whatever," Olivia says with a shrug.

"Livy," Cassie warns in her best 'big sister' voice.

"Loosen up, it's a comedy," Olivia says, as on-screen Colonel Danning grabs onto the women, and says, "Hey! It's what I do," and kisses her.

"I don't think it's meant to be comedy," Cassie comments, sitting back on the couch as soon as she realizes how badly she wants to see the rest of the show herself.

"Really? Well, that just makes it a whole lot more funny," Olivia comments.

"The positronic field emitters are off-line, but I can compensate by generating a feedback loop," Monroe announces from the TV.

"They sure got Mom's technobabble right," Emma comments.

"Naw, when Mommy talks, it make sense," Ty argues.

"Damn it, Colonel! Just because they're aliens and their skulls are transparent doesn't mean that they don't have rights!" Levant says, sounding completely exhausted by his own speech.

All three of the Jackson children double over laughing, although Will was young enough that he might have been imitating his sisters.

As Grell appears on screen, Becky Lynn and Tammy stare at him. He raises an eyebrow, and Becky Lynn says, "Teal'c makes that face."

"And he has a weird shape on his forehead," Tammy points out.

"But he's not a robot," Becky Lynn says.

"Now, but he is all metally," Emma points out helpfully.

-0-0-0-

"Those kids have been awfully quiet," Sam says, looking at the basement door suspiciously.

"We'd probably better go check on them," her husband agrees, putting down the cards.

"I believe you are saying these things because you do not like the cards that you were dealt," Teal'c says.

"Whose idea was it to play poker with stoneface anyway?" Janet asks, "I fold, and am going down to check on the kids."

"Me, too," Sam says.

"I'm with them," Daniel says.

Jack lays his cards down without saying a word. Teal'c raises his eyebrow at his wife by way of challenge. She puts her cards down, and follows the others out of the room.

Janet knows there is trouble as soon as they enter the stairway. She hears the voice of Levant, the actor who mocked her husband on a television show say, "What? What? I haven't finished translating the alien text. Grell, what-what do you think?"

There is a pause and then the voice of Reese says, "What the hell is that?"

"What are you watching?" Janet says, running down the last couple of stairs and startling the children. All of them, from the toddler to the teenager, look up at her with startled and guilty expressions on their faces.

"We were watching Wormhole X-Tream," Olivia says proudly.

"Wormhole X-Tream? That thing actually made it on to television?" Sam asks in shock.

Daniel flinches, "Ah… I might have had something to do with the kids getting their hands on that. See… I, ah… kept a copy of it. Down in the basement."

"And why would you do that?" Jack asks, taking on the role of commanding officer in a way that he very rarely did during team nights.

"Well, it was funny," Daniel says with a shrug.

"Science fiction is an existential metaphor that allows us to tell stories about the human condition. Isaac Asimov once said, 'Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinded critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all'." Teal'c says.

"That was a very Grell thing to say," Tammy says with a giggle.

"Olivia, we talked about not sharing classified things with other people," Janet says with a sigh.

"Nothing in this was classified," Cassie says in a rush to defend her sister. She's already sensed that if her sister gets in trouble, she as the oldest one there, is probably going to get in trouble for it as well.

"Right, well, it's about as close to classified as it's going to get," Janet says.

"How could any of that be classified? I mean, it's about aliens," Tammy says with a roll of her eyes.

"Yeah, it's not like it's true-to-life. Daddy doesn't go around kissing a bunch of aliens," Ty points out.

Shelby just barely stops herself from making a comment about how she is the only one of the group who regularly kisses aliens. Well, one alien in particular, but still. She can't make that comment though, because her sisters have no idea what either of them do in Cheyanne Mountain. She didn't really plan on telling them either, partly because she isn't sure they would believe her, and partly because she doesn't want them to worry. She really wishes that Janet would downplay the whole thing, because it's going to be harder to laugh at the show and the similarities to their friends if Olivia is getting in trouble for showing it to them.

"Right, it's just a silly little show," Shelby says with a smile.

"But the people in the show are like the ones in real life," Becky Lynn points out, her eyes wide as she stares the at the TV screen.

"Well, that's because we met the guy who was making the show. They needed an Air force consultant, so they came and talked to all of us, and I guess they liked us so much that they put little bits of who we were into the show," Jack says, smiling at the girl.

The kids seem to buy it, and just then Ty jumps up on the back of a couch to do an impression of Colonel Danning, "It's what I do!" He then jumps down, and chases after Olivia trying to give her a kiss.

"I'm not an alien!" she protests.

"That's true," Ty says, turning to chase after Cassie.

"Ew!" she says, running out of the way of the small boy.

"Let's all play Dannings and aliens," Emma suggests.

Will reaches his hands up to his mother, indicating that he wants her to pick him up. She obeys the summons, and he plants a wet sloppy kiss on her cheek. "Aein," he informs her.

"Well, they're not quiet anymore, Janet," Sam says.

"I think our work is done, you want to go play another game?" she asks.

"Maybe something where the robot doesn't have an unfair advantage?" Jack suggests.

**The Next Day**

Becky Lynn stares at Teal'c over the breakfast table.

"Are you not pleased with your tart?" he asks.

"Shelby says we're 'posed to call them pop tarts," Becky Lynn says, taking a bite.

"They do not resemble soda," Teal'c replies, glaring at the offending treat in his hand as he takes a bite.

"So are you a robot?"

"I am not," Teal'c replies.

"No, your skin is metally, but it's not that metally enough to be made of metal," Becky Lynn says.

"Your powers of observation are very astute," he replies.

"But you're not human," Becky Lynn says.

Teal'c doesn't deny it.

Becky Lynn tilts her head at him in surprise, "And you do go to other planets, don't you?" She stares at him for a little longer, thinking seriously, "In fact, you're from another planet, aren't you?"

Teal'c just looks at her.

"That's why your stomach is all funky. It's your alien part. And your forehead, it's all alieny as well."

Teal'c just blinks and takes another bite of strawberry pop tart.

Becky Lynn bites her lip, "Teal'c, you're not going to go home like ET, are you?"

"If I ever returned to my home, I would take my family with me," he says gravely.

"And I'm part of your family?" Becky Lynn asks, bouncing on her seat.

"Indeed," he says.

"So will I get to live on Mars when you go home?"

"The atmosphere of the planet you call Mars is uninhabitable."

"So Venus?"

"It is too warm."

"I'm not going to trick you into telling me anything you don't already know, am I?"

"You are correct," Teal'c says.

"That's ok, I'll find another way to figure out where you are from."


	73. Part 6 Chapter 12

**Two Days Later**

Teal'c walks into the apartment, and suddenly quickens his pace up to Shelby. He takes her into his arms, and kisses her. Then Teal'c picks her up, and spins her around the room.

"Did you have a good day at work?" she giggles.

"It would have been better if you had called me with our joyous news."

"What news?" she asks.

"Did you not want me to mention it in front of your sisters," he whispers, putting his hand on her stomach.

"I'd kind of like you to mention it in front of me," she says back.

"The child which grows within you," he says.

"I'm pregnant?" she says.

"How did you not know that?" he asks.

"Well, it's not like you get a memo or something," she giggles.

"Did you not sense its heart?" he asks.

"Ah… no, you did?" she asks, with an expression he hasn't learned to read yet on her face. An expression which clearly means he's full of crap.

"Indeed."

"And do you always sense heart beats?" Shelby asks.

"Of course," he says, blinking.

"And why did you never mention this before?"

"I didn't mention the fact that I could see or hear, either," Tea'c replies.

"Yeah, well those are normal human things."

"Humans do not sense heartbeats?" he says in shock.

"No, like you feel it all the time? Like right now?"

"Your heartbeat has increased in speed."

"Yeah, well, I just found out that my husband has superpowers."

"How do you predict attacks when you cannot hear the pounding of your opponents' heart?" Teal'c asks quizzically.

"Does Jack know that you can hear heartbeats?"

"I did not realize that it was a special skill of any kind."

"Your commanding officer has to know about this. Does it work with other animals too? Is it just humans, or is it any living creature?"

"I can sense any creature with a vascular system, but it can only be done at a distance when the creature is similar to a Jaffa," Teal'c says.

"What is a Jaffa?" Tammy says. Becky Lynn kicks her sister. She knows that she has a better chance of getting new information out of her guardian when he thinks they already know what he is telling them.

"A Jaffa is someone that comes from the tribe Teal'c came from," Shelby says.

"It is not, it's the kind of alien he is," Becky Lynn says.

"What?" Shelby practically shouts at her husband in disbelief. She's pretty sure right now that her husband spilled the beans.

Teal'c gives her a look.

"I knew it!" Becky Lynn says.

"Crap," Shelby says, realizing that she is, in fact, the one who spilled the beans.

"I want it noted that I was not the person who reveled this information," Teal'c says.

"No way," Tammy says.

"Sweetie," Shelby says, reaching for the girl.

"He's human!" Tammy says.

"Yes, honey, he is human, and he's also an alien," Shelby says.

"How?" Tammy says.

"That's why his skin is a different color," Becky Lynn offers.

"I just thought he was black!" Tammy says.

"He's not black, he's brownish gold," Becky Lynn tells her sister.

"I'm not talking about his color, I'm talking about his race."

"Yeah, well his race is Jaffa," Becky Lynn says with an overdramatic eye roll.

"Teal'c, are you sure we're having a baby?" Shelby says, having forgotten the good bit of information in the confusion.

He nods his head.

Shelby grins.

"Can we name it Flower?" Becky Lynn asks.

"It's a little early to be discussing names," Shelby says, "And it could be a boy."

"If it's a boy, you could still name it Flower."*

"We will be selecting a name for my son which denotes power and strength," Teal'c says with a look of scorn.

"Ah… Teal'c, are you, like, sure about the boy thing? You can sense gender as well as heart beats?" Shelby asks.

"I am uncertain about the gender. Although male hearts tend to beat a little slower, and this heart beat is as slow as Rya'ac's was."

"I have a son," Shelby says.

"And I have an alien for a brother-in-law," Becky Lynn says with the same amount of awe and enthusiasm that her sister had about the baby.

**The Next Day**

"You have become ill," Teal'c says.

"Helpful," Shelby says, pulling away from the toilet.

"Who exposed you to the germs which has caused you to become ill?"

"Germs? Are you kidding? This is because of the baby!" Shelby informs her.

"The baby is ill?" Teal'c says with concern.

"No, this is just morning sickness."

"Here is another Earth term I am unfamiliar with."

"Morning sickness is like when a pregnant women throws up," Shelby says.

"Why does the child make you throw up in the morning?"

"It's not just in the morning," Shelby says, standing up and nudging her husband out of the way to get to the sink to clean her mouth.

"This is unacceptable that our baby has caused you to feel ill," he says with concern still in his voice.

"It's normal, Teal'c."

"Jaffa women do not have to endure this phenomenon."

"Yeah, well, I'm not a Jaffa," he says.

"It is possible for a human to become a Jaffa."

"Really?" she says spinning around to face him, "Sickness happens. People get colds, and the flu, and morning sickness, and they survive. And it's all ok. You don't need a nuclear solution to a tiny problem!"

"I do not wish you to be ill," Teal'c says fiercely.

"Well, I appreciate that, but illness isn't that bad."

"Does it not cause you to have discomfort?"

"Right, but it also causes you to have sick days in front of the TV. And when you've had a long sickness and you wake up, and you feel good. And you've never felt so alive in your entire life. And carrying a baby into the world is magical, even if it makes me sick."

"I do not remember these feelings from before my prim'ta."

"Being sick is part of being human," she says looking at her husband's eyes.

"I am not human," Teal'c reminds her.

The two of them look at each other for a long time.

"Do you ever wish that I was human?" Teal'c asks.

She stares at him. "Do you?"

"Sometimes I wish that I could be mortal. That we could grow old together. That I could lie beside you all night, and lose consciousness. Sometimes I wish I knew what you meant when you talked about a dream. I wish to have dreams with you in them."

Shelby starts to cry.

"Have I made you sad?" he says concerned.

"Happy tears."

"I will never understand humans."

"Do you know what I hate about you not being a human?"

"My symbiot?" he asks.

"The fact that whenever I let you hold me all night, I feel guilty that you are getting bored," she says.

"I never grow bored of you," Teal'c says, gently touching her face. "But I am sure you wish that I did not have a symbiot."

"I don't know, Junior is kind of growing on me," she says, putting her hand on his stomach.

"I am much more fond of the Junior which you are growing within you," he says, touching her stomach.

"You and me both," she giggles.

"And I am sure you do not like the way my skin has a metallic glow."

"Actually, I love it. It adds to the lovely sculpted thing that you have going on," she says running her hands over his shoulders and biceps. "Sometimes I wish that you had not lived so long before I came along."

"I wish that I could let you see though my eyes. The planets that I have seen, the solar systems that I have visited."

"I wish that too," she says.

There is a long pause, "Someday, when Ry'ac has grown, I will use my leave to show the universe to you, instead of us visiting my son," he says.

"Yeah, when Ry'ac is grown, we're still going to want to visit him. And we will have this baby, and my sisters."

"We could take them."

"You want to go traveling around the universe with three kids?" she says.

"Indeed," he says leaning forward to kiss her.

She pulls away conscious of the fact that she just threw up, "Well, I'm not sure the Air Force is going to authorize us for joy rides."

"Shelby, I forgot to do my math!" Tammy calls.

"Again? Seriously?" Shelby mutters, says heading out of the closet.

"Can you make me my tart, Teal'c?" Becky Lynn says.

"You should really teach her to make her own pop tart; it's a toaster, and she's six."

"I enjoy taking care of her," Teal'c says.

"And that is why you are the perfect man."

*I had a cousin who was five when her brother was born, and she really wanted to name him Flower. Actually when he was like twelve, she would call him that whenever he annoyed her.


	74. Part 6 Chapter 13

**One Day Later**

"Janet, there is something that I feel I really need to report to you. Well, actually, there are two somethings that I feel like I need to report to you."

"Ah… ok."

"I'm going to need to be put on medical light duty. It won't affect my job much, 'cept I won't be able to lift nobody. But I still thought you should know."

"Medical? Is something wrong, Shelby?" Janet asks in surprise.

Shelby's face flushes, "I'm pregnant."

"Really?" Janet's eyebrows raise, "I thought you and Teal'c weren't going to try to have babies."

"We changed our mind. Well, I changed our mind, if you want to be more precise."

"Well, that is wonderful," Janet says smiling.

"The really strange part of the news is how I found out about that part of the news," Shelby rushes on, "See, Teal'c told me. Apparently he can sense heartbeats."

Janet blinks, "He can sense naquadah in people's blood."

"Well, yes, but the way he described this was that he can actually sense the heartbeat of our baby. That he can sense all heartbeats. He didn't tell anyone before, because he assumed that all humans could do it. To him, this is as natural as seeing and hearing."

"That's amazing, but on a certain level, it makes sense. The heart send out an electromagnetic signal; it would not be impossible for Jaffa to have evolved an organ to sense that. Of course, I'd like to do some testing."

"You don't believe him?" Shelby says incredulously.

"It's not so much that, as that I want to have some hard and fast evidence before I go with my findings to anyone else. I also want to see the extent of it. See what could fool it, and what could heighten it. You know, of course, that this has great strategic value for his team?"

"I know, that's why I'm making him tell Jack right now."

"I'll schedule some testing for the next time that his team is on stand down," Janet says.

"Ok, just don't make it too… lab-ratty," Shelby says nervously.

"Oh, no, of course not," Janet assures her.

-0-0-0-

"How are you and our fetus doing today?" Teal'c says.

"Let's say baby from now on, ok?" she prompts.

He puts a hand on her stomach, and meets eyes with her. There is terror in his eyes, and it spreads to his wife without a word between them.

"What?" she asks.

"The baby is different."

"There is something wrong with the baby, isn't here?" she asks, scared.

"I don't know if there is something wrong, I only know that the baby is different," he repeats slowly.

"Different how?"

"It feels different."

"I can't feel it, you have to tell me how it is different."

He shakes his head, uncertain.

"Well, is it just different like this baby is different from Ry'ac, or different in a different way?"

"It is different than any baby I have sensed in a womb up until now," he says.

Shelby reaches past him to the bowl they keep their keys in by the door.

"Have I done something to anger you?" he asks.

"No, I'm going to figure out what is wrong with our baby."

"I will accompany you," he says nervously.

"No, honey, you have to stay with the kids."

"We could take them with us."

"You want to wake up the kids after bedtime, let them see us all panicked, and drive them all over town trying to figure out what is wrong with me?"

"You will call me as soon as you have information," Teal'c says.

"Yeah," she says heading out of the door.

-0-0-0-

Shelby didn't cry very often. When you lead a tough life you often end up with a tough outer coating, but it isn't chain mail. It's more like a crusty coat of dirt. While it may protect you from the sun or from dirt or even to some degree from a blow, it is not match for a steady stream of water.

That universal solvent, terror, has worn away any protective coating that Shelby had developed over the years.

The whole drive tears have been streaming down her face, until she really expected to look down and see a puddle on her lap.

So her eyes are red and blotchy by the time she arrives at Janet's doorstep.

"Shelby, what happened? Come in!" she says moving out of the doorway to give the younger women entrance.

"Thank you, but could you please come with me to the infirmary, we have an ultrasound machine there, and I just need to check on the baby."

"Of course, why?" Janet says fearing the worse.

"I don't know, Teal'c just said there was something different."

Janet retreats into her house to tell her husband, and returns quickly.

-0-0-0-

"Oh," Janet says.

"That sounded good. So, is it like 'oh, it's not quite as bad as I thought', or 'oh, this is medically interesting'."

"Honey, there are two heartbeats."

"Why does our baby have two heartbeats?" Shelby says, scooting up in the hospital bed in order to see the monitor more clearly. "Oh, two sacs. Two whole babies."

"Yeah, you're having twins," Janet says with a smile.

"No, I can't be having twins. I am not a good enough mother for twins. I wasn't entirely sure that I was going to be able to handle three kids. I am almost certain that I am not going to be able to handle four. And two at once! I mean, they're going to need to be fed and diaper-changed all at the same time. Oh, my gosh, they're going to need someone to teach them to drive at the same time! Teal'c and I just learned to drive ourselves in the last couple of years!"

"You've got seventeen years before these kids are old enough to drive. You guys will have been driving for plenty of years by then," Janet says comfortingly.

"No, you don't understand; I can't do this! I get impatient when kids don't do exactly what I say the first time. And kids never do what you say the first time! I can't stand a messy house! I mean with two kids that are old enough to do chores, it's possible to have a pretty clean house. But when there are four of them, and two are babies… I'm never going to have a clean house again!"

"You can hire a maid."

"And Teal'c! He's going to have five kids!"

"Teal'c is really good with kids."

"And I only know one nursery rhyme. One! And I'm pretty sure I actually say it wrong. Quick who lives in a shoe? Is it a witch?"

"You know, they make nursery rhyme books," Janet says. Then she shakes her head, finally realizing that no matter what she says, she isn't going to calm down the women before her. "Look, maybe you should go home, and finish this freak out with your husband."

"Are the babies ok? There isn't something wrong with their hearts, is there?" Shelby asks.

"They're fine, perfectly healthy," Janet says, patting the young nurse on the knee.

-0-0-0-

"What sort of danger is our child encountering?" Teal'c asks as soon as Shelby comes through the door.

"Children, T, and no danger," she says.

"I do not understand," he says, wearing the face that is his panicked face, even though it barely varies from his normal one.

"We've got children, twins, honey," she says, pulling one of his large hands onto her stomach.

Relief flows over his face.

"Two babies," Shelby says in horror.

"We are doubly blessed."

"We are doubly screwed."

"I do not understand what coitus has to do with anything?"

"Really, you don't know how coitus has to do with my pregnancy?" she teases.

"I do not understand the word in this context."

"Right, 'screwed' means you're in trouble."

"Is it against the law to have multiple births in this country?" he asks.

She closes her eyes, "No, I'm just… we're going to have two babies, four kids. That is a lot, Teal'c; that's a lot of kids."

"Are you regretting the decision to have offspring with me?" he asks, cupping her cheek in one hand while the other stays on her stomach.

"No, I just… I'm not sure that I'm good enough for twins. I'm not even sure I'm good enough to have one baby. But if you have twins, you are going to have two of them needing their diapers changed at the same time. You're going to have two of them that need baths. They are going to have two of them learning to walk, and running in separate directions at the exact same time. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to take care of that."

"Fortunately, our babies will have two parents," Teal'c says.

Shelby is silent for a moment.

"I am not going to leave you," he assures her.

"You're going to keep going through the 'Gate."

"I will stop if you ask me to," he says softly.

She shakes her head. Teal'c without the Stargate just wouldn't be Teal'c. And she would never ask him to stop being who he was just for her. She shakes her head, and with his hand where it is that results in her rubbing her hand against his cheek.

"I do not understand why you think caring for babies is so difficult," he says confused.

She raises her eyebrows completely befuddled by the fact her husband isn't joking right now. "Ah… cause you don't get to sleep." She pauses, "You don't sleep, anyway. So I guess it would be easier for you. But there are diapers."

"What?" Teal'c asks.

"What do you wrap around a baby's butt on Chulak?"

"Clothing."

"Well, when you have to clean the butt clothing, that's diapers."

"You do not have to clean it more often than you have to clean anything else," Teal'c says in a confused voice.

"Ah…are you kidding me? They go to the bathroom in them."

"That is untrue. The children of Chulak, go to the bathroom in the same place that adults do."

"Well, these babies aren't going to be super-babies, and we're going to have to deal with the poop, and the bottle, and the crying."

"I am excited to partake in this adventure with you," Teal'c says.

Shelby looks at him suspiciously. "I know that we probably should have talked about this before, but Jaffa men don't normally have a whole lot to do with childcare, do they?"

"They do not; however, I plan on being a hands-on parent with our children, in the same way that I have been with your sisters."

"Good," Shelby says with a relieved sigh.

Teal'c looks at his hand, which is still resting on his wife's belly, "I think that one of our offspring is mostly likely male, and the other one is most likely female," he informs her.

She stands on her toes so that her lips can meet his on equal terms, without him looking down on her. For the first time, that is very important.


	75. Part 6 Chapter 14

Daniel runs downstairs when he hears a crash. He is pretty sure that his house is being robbed right now. But what he sees is his wife sobbing and staring at a broken cup.

"Janet?" he asks nervously.

"I didn't mean to wake you. I'll clean this up and go to bed."

"Did she lose the baby?" he asks.

"No, Shelby and her twins are fine," Janet says, grabbing the broom and starting to clean her the floor quickly.

"Twins?" he asks, raising his eyebrows.

"Yep," he says.

"Well, that's great," he says enthusiastically.

Janet looks up at him with wet lashes.

"Honey," he says, moving over to take his wife into his arms, regardless of the broom and shards of plaster.

"I'm a bitter old women. I don't want to be like that," she sobs.

"You're not bitter, and you are so far from old," he coos.

"Well, thanks, but today I'm dealing with a freaking 20-year-old who's scared she can't take care of four children, and I all can think of is how bad I want four kids!"

"I think Shelby is older than twenty," he says. His wife gives him a glare, "That was so not the point of the conversation. Look, I know we've been trying to have a baby for a while…"

"And I can't even tell you about it, because you get all guilty, and it is not your fault. I mean, I knew going in that having kids would be hard for us."

"Are you sorry you married me?" he asks, pulling away to look in her face before he asks the probing question.

"No," she answers with absolute certainty. She smiles at him, "We have three great kids. I said that I was going to be happy with one. And we have three, and l love them so much."

"But you still want more," Daniel says.

She nods.

"You know, there is more than one way to have a kid," Daniel says softly.

"Now, that's not fair; we agreed that if we had another kid it was going to be a genetic one," Janet says quickly.

He shakes his head, "I know honey, I wasn't trying to undermine that. I was talking about in-vitro."

She stares at her husband in shock.

"That would take care of my mobility issue, right?"

"Yeah, it should. But are you seriously considering spending thousands of dollars for a baby when we already have three?"

"Yeah, if that's what we want."

"When there are already so many kids in the world who need loving parents?" she asks.

"We've already got two of those, and I made a deal."

"You don't have to walk on eggshells around me. I would be fine if we don't have another baby… despite my freak-out," she says, looking at the shattered plaster around her with no small amount of embarrassment.

"I like the idea of having another baby with your genes," he says.

"I don't think we need to take drastic measures, at least not yet. We just need to try longer," she says.

"I said we have options, and there is another we should talk about… I could carry the baby. I mean, I don't know if that would make it easier or not."

"It wouldn't. That would only help if I had problems carrying the baby, not conceiving it."

"Ok, well, I didn't know that."

"I appreciate it. We'll have another kid, Daniel," Janet says.

He smiles. "Let me take care of this," he says picking up the broom.

"And this from the man who is always telling our kids that the person who made the mess has to clean it up."

"I actually think I had a part in making this mess," he says.

"No, this is exactly 0% your fault. Go to bed; I'll go join you in a little bit."

**One Month Later**

"Mommy, we got you the best present ever for mother's day!" Emma says, jumping on her mother's bed at six-fifteen in the morning.

"And part of the present was supposed to be letting mommy sleep until nine," Jack says, coming up behind his daughter and mouthing the words "I'm sorry" to his wife.

"That's ok; I've got to go see this best present ever, don't I?" she says, following her overly-excited offspring out to the garage, where her eye fall on a bunch of boxes and the body of a 1940 Indian.

"What?" she asks, turning to her husband in shock, not being fooled for a minute that her children actually had anything to do with this.

"Do you like it, Mommy?" Ty asks excitedly.

"Jack, I can't just go around riding a motorcycle. I'm a mother, for crying out loud."

"Well, in case you didn't notice, you do have two other adults in the house," Jack says.

"And we'll be super-good when you're working on the 'cycle, Mommy. That's our part of the present."

"I don't need this, guys," she says, turning away from the present, and realizing only then how much she had missed it.

"I think you do. I mean, I've got my telescope and my National Geographics. Jacob here has his poker game and his soap operas."

"What?" Sam says, turning to her father in shock.

"Right, well it's not exactly a soap opera, it's a telenovela," Jack corrects himself.

"You know Spanish?" Sam asks in surprise.

"He had to learn so he could understand what Maria said to Felipo," Emma says as if it's obvious.

Jack quickly rushes on to avoid Jacob's piercing glare, "The point is, we all have lives beyond kids and work. And you've given up a lot of your life for your kids. But they're a little older now. All of them are in school for a least a couple hours a week, and they're getting a lot more independent. You can afford to spend a little bit of time away from them every now and again."

Sam smiles sadly, and reaches out to them, "Thanks!"

**Two Days Later**

Shelby makes a dash for the bathroom in the middle of the night. She just barely makes it in time. When she's done losing last night's supper, she walks back into the bedroom, and sees Teal'c sitting in a chair, reading some sort of textbook he got from the library.

"I didn't realize you were in here," she says.

He doesn't even respond.

**The Next Day**

"Janet, can I talk to you for a bit," Shelby says the next day as their lunch break begins. Janet nods her head, and they go into Janet's office. "This is awkward. But I don't know what else to ask. I mean, none of my other friends have had kids. Well, except for Sam, but she didn't have a man in her life back then."

"Ah… how awkward is this going to be?" Janet asks, not sure that she wants to talk about anything sex-related with the much younger women.

"Like, when you blew chunks, did Daniel come into the bathroom with you?" Shelby blurts out.

Janet blinks, "Yeah, not that I really wanted him to. That's actually something I would have been more than happy to do by myself."

"Teal'c doesn't. I mean, he doesn't even sleep. He's just sitting there, awake, and doesn't even come and check on me. I get pissed, but I don't know if maybe I shouldn't be. Like maybe I shouldn't expect him to do that. Maybe most guys don't."

"You know what, honey? It doesn't matter what most guys do. All that matters is what you want Teal'c to do. If you want him in there, tell him."

"I guess he might not know anything about this. I mean, he comes from a place where the women don't get morning sickness. Maybe he even blames me for this; I mean, he told me to take a symbiote so I wouldn't have to deal with morning sickness."

"Just tell him what you want. That's where Daniel and I ran into trouble. I wanted him to talk to me more, and I didn't ask for it."

"You and Daniel had trouble?" Shelby asks in surprise.

"Yeah, honey, a couple of years ago. We almost broke up."

"I had no idea," Shelby says.

"Just talk to your husband," Janet advises.

-0-0-0-

"How are our fetuses?" Teal'c asks as Shelby returns home.

"Well, they're fine, but I'm not," she says with a sigh.

"What is wrong?" he asks.

"I'm exhausted, and my feet hurt, and I feel like I am going to throw-up."

Teal'c nods his head.

Shelby sighs, "Teal'c, I want you to feel sorry for me, and bring me crackers, and rub my feet."

"Will any of these things help ease your symptoms?" he asks stoically.

"Well no, probably not."

"Then why should I partake in these activities?"

"Because, Teal'c, I'm pregnant. I'm completely miserable, and it's all because I'm bringing your children into the world. I know it's not your fault. And I want to have these kids. But you're not suffering, so I would really appreciate it if you would sympathize with me."

"Empathy is not something that I am very good at," Teal'c reveals.

"I know that," Shelby says reaching over, and stroking his forearm.

"It does not mean that I am not extremely grateful for the fact that you are carrying my children within you."

"Sometimes I feel like you think it's my fault for being sick. Like, if I just took a symbiote, I wouldn't have to deal with it."

He pauses, "I am still quite unfamiliar with the ways of Earth. But I have come to respect them. There is beauty in the act of being sick. The women of Earth have much difficulty in bringing children into the world. I think this makes people realize how precious their children are. Perhaps if Jaffa women had to undergo as much turmoil as human women, they would not allow the wars between the gods to continue. A child that costs this much would not be spent so easily."

"You realize that all children are worth the same amount, even if they were born easily. Ry'ac is just as precious as our children are," she says.

"I am aware of this fact, but I had never realized the worth of my own child before," Teal'c says, "Now sit down in the chair, and I will begin massaging your feet. I want to engage in the acts husband do on this planet."

"Janet was right, talking works."

"I have found the doctor to be very wise on previous occasions. And I hope you will always feel comfortable communicating with me."


	76. Part 6 Chapter 15

**One Month Later**

Shelby runs into the infirmary, "Daniel's been exposed to radiation!" she exclaims.

"Well, don't you get near him!" Janet instructs her pregnant nurse as she runs out of the room. "Let's get him scrubbed down." Everything in her wants to take her husband into her arms, but she knows that that would end badly. She knows that that would just be putting herself in danger, and wouldn't help her husband. "Do we know what kind and how much?"

"It was a device housing an unstable radioactive variation of naquadah. We think his right hand was exposed to the equivalent of over eight to nine grays of neutron radiation resulting from direct contact. Full body exposure of over seven," Sam says.

"Oh, my God," Janet says. Her knees give way, and all she can hear in her head is the words, 'fatal, fatal, fatal,' like drum parade in her head.

Jack catches her before she goes down.

Hammond looks at Carter, knowing he's not going to get an explanation from the man's wife here.

"It's a lethal dose, sir," Sam says.

-0-0-0-

"I have to go take care of him," Janet says from her seat in her office.

"You can just sit here, there is nothing you can do for him right now," O'Neill says in an attempt to calm her down.

"I'm not a wilting flower. My husband is in there, dying. And I might not be able to figure out what to do to save him right now, but I sure as hell know that if I do nothing to save him I'm going to end up with a dead husband. And if that is going to happen I'm at least going to go and spend the last couple of hours with him."

Jack searches her eyes, and knows that he's not going to be able to stop her. So he doesn't try.

"Daniel," she says, walking over to her husband. She takes his hand now, because she can, "I've got a lot of people looking for a way to solve this."

He shakes his head, "Janet, we don't go running to our offworld allies every time an individual's life is at stake. And don't go telling me that this is any different, because my life is no more valuable than anybody else's."

"You're wrong. You matter more to me, and the kids."

"Well, everyone matters more to someone."

"What happened, Daniel?" she asks, because their oldest argument is making her sad right now.

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does, they said you tried to sabotage them. That doesn't sound like you."

"There was an accident. I guess the scientists figured the government would hold them responsible. I guess they figured it was easier to blame me," he says.

"Well, we're not going to let them get away with this."

"There really isn't much that we can do about this."

"Yes, there is," Janet says firmly.

"If they really want to blame me, denying it isn't going to change anything. Ten thousand years ago, a Goa'uld tried the same experiments that they're trying, and he nearly blew the entire planet to bits. I tried telling them that, they wouldn't listen. They're gonna build that bomb and nothing we say is gonna stop them," Daniel says.

Janet bite her lip, and debates between trying to convince her husband that everything that is going to be ok, and doing what her children need. She decides, as they always do, to go with what the children need. "I want to bring the kids here to say goodbye."

"Do it before you have to wrap me up like a mummy," Daniel says.

Tears start to fall down Janet's face, "I'm sorry," she says, trying to walk out of the room.

He catches her hand, "Janet, I've got to tell you something. I love you with my whole heart. And I want you to be happy."

Janet makes a token effort to pull away, but Daniel's hand holds her firm.

"Listen to me. If I die, I want you to be happy. Sha're said that to me before she died, and…"

"Daniel," Janet says softly.

"Promise me that you'll move on as soon as you feel ready to move on."

"And what if I never do?"

"Then that's ok too," he says, looking at her kindly.

"I love you," he says again.

"I love you, too," she says.

"You'd better get the kids here soon," he reminds her.

-0-0-0-

"Hi, Dad," Olivia says softly.

"Come here," he says, holding out his hands to her. The girl climbs up onto the bed with her, and Will follows suit.

"Mom said you are going to die, but that's not true, is it, Dad?" Olivia asks.

He pulls his kids closer to him, "I'm sorry, honey; it doesn't look good. Cass, can you come nearer, please?"

"I don't want to," she says, shifting her weight from foot to foot by the door.

"Ok, well, I want you to listen to some things. I love you guys so much, and I am so proud of you. And I am unbelievably sad that I am not going to see you grow up. But I know that you guys are going to be truly amazing. And I want you to never forget that I loved you with my whole heart."

He hears a sniffle from Cassie.

"Honey, come get a hug."

"It's not fair!" she exclaims.

"I know, this sucks."

"No, I already lost parents, Daniel! And then you choose to go play the freaking hero! Did you even think about what it would be like for us?" Cassie rants.

"I didn't want to die. I still don't. But I had to do the right thing. If I hadn't, a lot more people would have ended up dead."

"So?" Cassie asks.

"So?" Olivia says incredulously. "You don't seriously mean that!"

"I do! He's our dad, and we should matter more to him than a bunch of people that he's never even met," Cassie rants.

"I do love you more. Cassie, if it were a choice between you and them, I would have picked you," he says, locking eyes with her.

"I've already lost enough," Cassie says.

"I know it," he says.

"Now shut up, because this is the last time that Daddy gets to talk to us," Olivia says.

Daniel starts to cry.

"I'm sorry," Olivia says.

"It's not your fault. And it's ok to cry, and to be angry, and to feel whatever you are going to feel. I want you to be able to grieve however you need to. And I will love you no matter what."

"Even from heaven," Olivia asks.

"Oh, there is nothing in this world or the next that could stop me from loving you," he says. "Listen, I want you to take care of each other. It's going to be a rough for a little bit. I want you to help your mother with the chores. And be extra-nice to each other."

"Miss 'ou," Will says.

"I'm going to miss you too," Daniel says giving him a kiss.

-0-0-0-

"Lightning flashes, sparks shower, in one blink of your eyes you have missed seeing," the face says.

"Right. What did you mean when you said my fate is in my hands?" he says, referring to another dream-soaked memory that he had.

"When the mind is enlightened, the spirit is freed and the body matters not," Oma says.

"You're talking about ascension, right? Rising to a different plane of existence. Are you saying that I could do that? Become like you?" he asks.

"You must complete the journey you began at Kheb. Only then will you be able to find your way to the Great Path," she says.

"What do I do?" he asks. He isn't sure that he wants this, but he knows for a fact that he doesn't want to die.

"Release your burden," she says.

"Okay, well, consider it released. What's Step Two?" Daniel says, with a falsely cavalier voice.

"A tall man cannot hide in the short grass."

Well, Daniel is a tall man, and he knows that he isn't getting away with anything, "You know, I really, I don't have time for one of these kind of conversations."

"One cannot reach enlightenment by running from death."

"Tell me what to do," he insists even though he is pretty sure that he won't be able to hide his true feelings from her.

"Many roads lead to the Great Path. Only the willing will find their way," she sooths.

"Okay, well, I'm willing. So let's go. I mean, you know, do your thing. Glow me," he says quickly.

"The river tells no lies, though standing on the shore, the dishonest man still hears them," Oma says with an accusation in his voice.

"Right. I didn't think it was gonna be that easy," he says with a roll of his eyes.

Daniel finishes the flashback of his actions with the bomb, and turns to Oma to say, "Millions could still die." He really wishes that the ascended being would stop this. They had so much power, why didn't they do anything with it?

"The future is never certain. You saved many without regard for your own life," she says, sounding impressed.

"I could have destroyed the device," he says with regret. He doesn't really want to die. But if he does, he at least wants to make sure that his life is going to mean something.

"You believe your journey is still not over."

"Yeah, well, I have some kids who kind of rely on me. It's not like I can just go flitting off to the next adventure. Especially not when I'm not entirely sure what the point of my journey so far has been. I mean, if this is about being honest with yourself, I believe my entire life has been a failure."

"Why do you feel you have failed on your journey? You opened the Stargate for your world," Oma asks.

"I cracked the code; a lot of other people made it work," he says.

"The very next thing you did was help free the people of Abydos from evil."

"Well, it's not like that turned out so well. I couldn't leave it alone. I was the one that unburied the 'Gate. What happened to her was my fault. I couldn't save Sha're. Every Goa'uld I helped eliminate, another one took its place. Maybe I did something good every now and again, but nothing I've ever done seems to have changed anything."

"These tasks of which you speak were great challenges. Perhaps they were even impossible to achieve."

"Does that absolve me?"

"You feel your journey must continue until you have found redemption for these failures?"

"All I'm thinking about is the fact that my kids are going to grow up without a father, and I'm leaving Janet. Please. I don't like begging, but for them I will. Please don't let me die."

-0-0-0-

"Anyone can reach enlightenment. Anyone prepared to open their mind as you did when you first came to Kheb," Omma says to Daniel.

"They're trying to save me. They're healing me, I can feel it," Daniel tells her. He can feel the healing device, and the hope and prayers of his family binding him to this world, to this journey.

"Then your journey will continue as before," she says.

And then he feels pain. The unbelievable pain that Oma has been shielding him for a long time.

And he doesn't have any regrets.

"Janet," his voice sounds hoarse even in his own ears.

"Honey," she says in a terrified voice.

"I'm not going to die."

"Well of course not," she comforts.

He laughs, "No, this isn't some make-you-feel-better kind of crap. I'm really not going to die."

And he sounds like her husband.

"He's right," Jacob says as he looks at the light coming from the healing device.

And Janet flings herself over him, and starts to weep relief.

"Ah, my skin feels like it's on fire!" Daniel protests.

"I'm so sorry. I know better. I'm a doctor, you think I should at least be able to figure out not to inflict pain on someone who just about died of radiation sickness a few minutes ago."

"It's ok, pain is better than the nothingness," he tells her.

**One Day Later**

Daniel had been three when he'd seen his first mummy. They'd just moved from Greece to Egypt, and his parents stopped at the museum of Cairo and the Pyramids before they went to the dig.

The sarcophagus was half open, and Daniel can remember seeing a whole lot of gold, and cloth, and not being able to make sense of it.

"Daddy, what is that thing?" he'd asked.

Melborn had been lost in a translation, so it took a minute to answer. Three-year-old Daniel had patiently shifted from foot to foot waiting. And then his father had said, "Son, that's a person."

Daniel remembered being awed and confused by the comment. He'd thought there was a living and breathing person underneath all of that cloth. He'd thought it must be hard to sit as still as the man in the gold and cloth was sitting. He thought that it would be odd to have all these people walking around you look at you, and the things around you, while you just lay there and didn't say a word to him.

And now, now he was a mummy. And people were bustling around him, doing their jobs, and looking at him to check his vital signs. It was every bit as odd as he imagined it would be when he was a child.

But he isn't dead, and considering how close to death he was not that long ago, that is enough for him to be grateful for.

He hears his wife sit down next to him. They left him eye-holes, but he can't really see anything through them. So he has to rely on his other senses. And he smells his wife's shampoo over the disinfectant that all the nurses and doctors use on their hands.

"I came back for you," he tells her.

He can tell by the way that she jumps that she thought he was sleeping. "What do you mean?"

"I was kind of far-gone for a while there. In some sort of in-between place. Oma took me there; you remember Oma?"

He waits in silence for a second but his wife neither confirms or denies it. He figures she probably nodded her head, not realizing that he wouldn't be able to know she did it. He doesn't want to make her feel bad by bringing it up, so he just presses on. "Well, in this in-between place, she was offering me ascension. I didn't get all the details, but basically it sounded like…"

"You'd become like her," Janet breaks in.

"More or less."

"So you had the chance to be an all-powerful deity, and you gave it up for me? Daniel!" his wife scolds. "Don't you know that I love you as much as you love me? You told me that you wanted me to be happy after you died. Well, I want you to be happy too! Even if that means that you died."

He is unbelievably touched by what she's saying. But he knows that part of it is her ignorance. She's been blessed. The only deaths she's known are the easy kind, the kind where they are old, and ready, and slip away without protest. Except, of course, the deaths that she's seen in the infirmary. And even then, when Janet Fraiser goes up against death, the odds are that death is going to lose.

She doesn't understand the way that grief will change you, make you cold. That a part of you dies with the person, and that it can't be reborn again. Janet doesn't know what it is like to long for death yourself, even if you don't believe in an afterlife. To think that non-existence would be better than being alone. To wish you'd never been born, because the pain is too much.

She's strong, but he isn't sure she's that strong.

"I wouldn't have been all-powerful, and I came back for the kids as much as I did for you."

"Daniel, you're in pain," Janet says.

"Aren't you glad I choose to live?" he asks with a voice laced in accusation.

She pauses, "I am. I just worry… we won't be enough."

And Daniel thinks back to the day in the museum when he was only three years old. His father had told him how all the statues in the tomb were servants that were to be woken and wait on the king's ever need in the afterlife.

The idea of hundreds of little men running around alive had delighted Daniel. He'd asked if he could have just one to take home as a friend.

And his father had said, "They're priceless artifacts, Danny, not toys."

And little Danny had envied the mummy for one long second. Because he had so many friends, and Daniel had none, only two parents who were so often too busy to play with him.

And now, he_ was_ the mummy, and that's why he hadn't chosen death. He wasn't alone anymore.

"Janet, do you realize that this, I mean our family, it's the first time that I ever felt like I belonged? My whole life I've been searching for something to give me meaning, and I've found it. There is nothing else, nothing in the cosmos that would make me feel it more. I choose this, because I couldn't live without you anymore than you could live without me."

Janet makes a little gasping sound, and he desperately wants to hold her, but the wrapping is preventing him, so he does the next best thing. He says, "Oma tried to get me to say that I was amazing."

"Well, if omnipotence can't get you to crack, I might as well give up."

"Oma's got nothing on you, Janet. I am amazing," he says.

Janet's squeal attracts the attention of some of her nurses who are giving her very strange looks. "That's the most romantic thing he's ever said," she tells him.

"Oh, honey, he was talking 'bout himself, not you," one says with sympathy.

Janet stops trying to share the moment with anyone but her husband. She gets as close to touching him as she can without causing him pain, and says, "Yes, you are amazing."


	77. Part 7 Chapter 1

**Spoilers for Redemption Part 1**

**One Week Later**

"Hey, Shel, you're hunksband is here," a nurse who likes Teal'c just a little too much for Shelby's taste announces with a crude joke.

"Teal'c, is something wrong?" Shelby asks, coming out to greet him.

"I regret to inform you that I am going to be taking on unscheduled trip through the gate."

"Why?" she asks.

"Drey'auc is ill."

"Ok, well, I'll come," she says.

He shakes his head, "The Jaffa resistance camps are not completely safe."

"I've gone there before with you, to visit your son," she protests.

"They are not the sort of place that you would bring an infant."

"Right, and I'm carrying two infants within me right now," she says with a sigh.

"Indeed," he says.

"Ok, well, if Drey'auc is too sick to take care of Rya'c, you can send him through the gate, and I can look after him for a couple of days. It might actually be nice to have him meet the girls, since you've always said they were too young for gate travel."

"There are people among the Jaffa who will watch out for his welfare, and he is old enough to take care of his basic needs himself."

"I know, but I am here," she says.

"You will be busy enough caring for two children," he says, giving her a quick kiss before he disappears out the door.

-0-0-0

"Dray'ac refused to accept the new symbiote," Bray'tec informs Teal'c as they walk through the Jaffa camp, which is only a little better than the refugee camp that his ex-wife and son lived in when he first defected from Apophis.

He was good at providing for his wife and child. They never lacked anything. And he'd given all of that up, his freedom, and luxury, all for the chance to bite back at this parasitic plague on the galacy.

But it hasn't just cost him his own luxury. It had cost his wife and son far more than luxury. It had cost them some of the basic parts of life.

"Was a symbiote procured?"

"No. She did not wish us to sacrifice the life of another Jaffa to save her own, even one who still foolishly worships the false gods. We would all chose the same fate," Bra'tac explains.

It was a womanly thing to think, and to feel. It was the same kind of logic that Shelby used when she would not hit someone who was abusing her. It was a logic he did not understand. If the choice was to die or kill, you choose to kill. If the choice was to hit or be hit, you hit.

But you did not have to understand an objection to factor it into your plans. You could work with the least rational of rationalizations, "In the past…" he begins.

Bra'tac interrupts him, "It is not the past, my friend. The dissent we have bred has brought about many changes. The Goa'uld no longer trust the Jaffa priests with their young as they once did…"

Rya'c comes out of the tent, and gives his father a look that could wither daisies. Teal'c puts out his arms, expecting his son to run to him, excited, as he has so many times in the past.

"You dare show your face here? She is dead… because of you," he says, pushing past his father.

Teal'c walks into the tent where the woman he married lies dead. He feels a little guilt about this. He loves Shelby. He loves her more. But Drey'auc, he loved her first, and longest. And the years he had with her, they were not the happiest of his life. But they were the most successful.

Sometimes, on a bad day, he misses that. He misses people bowing whenever they talk to him. He misses people staring at his forehead because they recognize there the mark of the best man of a thousand planets, not because they think he's odd.

He misses everyone doing what he says.

And he kneels before Drey'auc and remembers. She was a good women. Perhaps she was a bit petty, a bit caught up in the material things.

But he was, too, when he married her.

And she did bear him a son.

He stands from his knees and leaves the tent to go find his son. Rya'c is sitting among some trees.

"She believed in you… in the fight you have chosen," he says, still angry.

"As you once did," Teal'c tells him.

"How long were we to live like this? Are we all to die like she did?" Rya'c demands.

"The Goa'uld can be defeated," Tealc assures his son.

"As long as we must carry symbiotes, we will depend on the Goa'uld for our lives," the boy says. He can't believe that his father doesn't have the reasoning power to figure out what he, not even a full warrior, has figured out.

"We will find a way to be free," Teal'c assures his son.

"My mother will never know this freedom you speak of. She had no choice. You brought this upon her. You chose for the both of us," he says, with fury in his voice. He reaches down, and picks up a staff weapon. He levels it at his father, "Now, as any warrior would, I choose to avenge her death."

"Everything I have done, I have done for you," Teal'c says, making no motion to defend himself.

"Then I am ashamed… for you have done nothing but bring pain and misery, and above all, false hope, to countless Jaffa," Rya'c says with bitterness in his voice.

"Then fire your weapon," Teal'c says calmly. He was trained, when he was only a child, never to run from a challenge. Never to fear death. He had learned this even before he had learned to control his emotions, a lesson that his son has not learned.

If his son were to kill him, he would be well within his rights. Teal'c has done enough to deserve death, that is to be sure. The fact that he hasn't gotten death yet is some kind of a miracle.

Rya'c hits his father across the face again and again with the staff weapon, and Teal'c still makes no motion to defend himself. Rya'c slams Teal'c in the stomach, and still Teal'c makes no motion to protect himself from the blows. He allows his son to take his fury out on his father; after all, he deserves it.

Teal'c is knocked to the ground. His son has caused him to be bloody, but he just rises up, calmly allowing his son to hit him again.

Rya'c is furious that his father will not fight back. "Fight! Or do you not consider me a worthy opponent?"

He prepares to hit his father again, but Bra'tac comes up behind him and grabs the staff weapon out of his hand, "You should be glad he does not, for if he did, he would snap you in half. You have become skilled, Rya'c, but a true Jaffa warrior does not let grief cloud his judgment."

"I choose my opponent as foolishly as he chose his," Rya'c says.

"Teal'c chose your mother's fate no more than he chose his own. We are all victims of the Goa'uld," the Jaffa master says calmly.

"No, Master Bra'tac, Rya'c is correct. I have failed both he and his mother," Teal'c says, resigned.

"The boy passes judgment without having fought a single battle… hmm? Fighting a war that appears unwinnable does not make one's cause less noble," Bra'tac says with a nod to the older of his students. The two of them have spent their entire lives on the fighting the Goa'uld. And while Bra'tac still can't imagine a win in this war, he has long been prepared for a noble death while fighting it.

"He cares more for dying than for his own flesh and blood!" the teenager accuses.

"So must all Jaffa, if any of us are ever to taste freedom," the master says, handing the staff weapon back to the child. Rya'c walks way, giving his father a glare.

-0-0-0-

Teal'c takes the fire over to the pyre, and watches as his wife goes up in flame. He really didn't want to be the one to do this honor. He tried to give it to his son; after all. he is only her ex-husband. But the others had argued. You needed to be a warrior in order to light the pyre, and his son is not a warrior yet.

"Shel Mak. Shel Assah," Teal'c says to his wife. He looks across the fire, and catches eyes with his son. As soon as the eye contact is made, his son makes a hasty retreat. Teal'c starts to follow him, but is stopped by his teacher.

"Let him mourn," the master says, having seen enough grief in his more than a century to know that it comes in all forms, including spite.

"He has grown to hate me," Teal'c says bitterly.

"He does not. Nor does he truly believe our cause is futile. Drey'auc would not allow it."

"Why does he speak as he does?" Teal'c asks. He is beginning to wish that he had brought Shelby along. She would be much better at understanding all of this than he is.

"Self-doubt. Since the day Apophis brainwashed him, he has believed his own mind is weak."

"It is not true."

"You were no different at his age. After the death of your father at the hands of Cronus, fear almost consumed you. Like Rya'c, it was desire for vengeance that gave you strength," Bra'tac observes. He can see how much the father and son are like one another, even though they quite often fail to see it in each other.

"Rya'c misplaces his blame."

"He directs his malice toward you because he believes you doubt him as much as he doubts himself."

"Why would he believe such a thing?" Teal'c asks his perceptive former teacher.

"Because you are his father, and you have not told him otherwise."

Teal'c walks back to the fire, thinking about how he needs to work on his communication skills. That would make him a better father, brother-in-law, and husband. He is about to have more children, and he does not want that to go as poorly as his first venture into fatherhood did.

Perhaps he could find a book or documentary which could provide him guidance on the subject.

But for now, he has to talk to his son, no matter how bad he is at the talking.

He sits down next to his son, and doesn't say anything for a time, "Not… so long ago, I was captured in battle, and Apophis took control of my mind. He made me believe that… I was once again his loyal First Prime. And I turned on my friends who trusted me. Were it not for Bra'tac and the right of Mal-Sharran, I would have died… believing that Apophis was my god. Whether you believe in me or what I have chosen to do does not change the fact that I have never doubted your heart, Rya'c. You need never win back my trust, my son, for you have never lost it."

His son's face is full of emotion, and this time he doesn't begrudge him it, even if he is going to be a warrior someday. He gives his son a tight hug.


	78. Part 7 Chapter 2

**Spoilers for Redemption Part II**

Earth is in danger, and Teal'c and Bra'tac are about to go off to try to save it when Teal'c is stopped by his son at his side, "I'm coming with you. If the Goa'uld truly can be defeated, then I wish to be a part of it. You said I could not judge this war if I am yet to fight a battle. Then let me fight."

Teal'c is torn. On Chulak, Rya'c was old enough to prove himself. But on Earth, he would still be considered a child.

And he liked the way of raising children on Earth. The way that you took so much care, and that you protected them more. He does not want his son to fight, ever. And he especially does not want his son to start fighting when he is only sixteen years old.

"You said you did not doubt me," Rya'c says, offended.

"I do not," Teal'c assures him.

"Then I will join you," the boy says, insecure.

And Teal'c knows that Shelby will probably kill him for this. But he also knows that if he doesn't do this, his relationship with his son is going to be hurt forever. His son is old enough to be a warrior, and part of love is doing what is best for another person, even when it rips you apart.

Teal'c hasn't seen his son do much fighting, so he isn't actually sure that is son is ready. He looks at the one who has taught them both, who gives a nod.

He is going with his son into battle.

-0-0-0-

Teal'c watches his son in the ship. He is still a child. Well, not a child, but that thing that the people of Earth call teenagers. It's not something that the people of Chulak recognize. Where he is from, you are a child, and then you are a man.

But his son is really no older than Cassie is. He just seems like it, because he spends so much of his time preparing for war, and doing the work of men. If he lived on Earth, he would spend his time chatting on the telephone, and listening to the kind of music that made his symbiote swim within his belly.

And maybe his son deserved all of those things.

He motions for his son to come to the edge of the spaceship with him, and says, "Ryac. You are to remain on board with Shaq'rel."

"Why?" he son asks, in a voice that has a sight bit of a whine to it. He is sounding more and more like a human teenager.

"One day, you will be a great warrior. This day, the danger is too great," he assures his son.

"I am prepared to die," the child says, puffing out his chest at the words that children start to say before they even understand what it means.

Teal'c smiles, and touches his son's cheek, "I am not prepared for you to die."

But then, the best laid plans are ruined, and an attack on the ship makes it no safer than the planet outside.

-0-0-0-

Rya'c's heart is beating quickly. He never felt like this in training. They had warned him of it, of course. They had explained about panic can overtake your mind, your training, your calm. They had explained to him how you had to have complete control over your emotions. That is what the years of meditation and training were all about.

Rya'c never had that much control, and that is why Bra'tac had not allowed him to go on his first mission, to become a man, yet.

And now, with his emotions still raw from his mother's death, he has even less control that usual.

Perhaps he should run back to the ship for help.

No, he is not a coward. He must find a way to save his father. A glider flies overhead. Yes, that is how he will save them.

-0-0-0-

Usually only "essential staff" are allowed in the control room. But when Shelby sneaks in and lodges herself in a corner, no-one objects.

Because the world was almost destroyed, but the danger is over now, and they have her husband and step-son to thank for it.

The least they could do was allow her to see the homecoming.

As soon as the gate opens, she runs down the steps to the gate room.

"So I hear you're an ace in the cockpit," she teases the teenager. He's grown up a lot since the last time that she saw him. It was only a few months ago, but his teenage growth spirt seemed to have happened in those months. More importantly, he had seen death, and saved lives. He had gone to battle, and become a man by the customs of his people.

"Master Bra'tac taught me well. I hope to be as good as my father one day," the boy-man says, with obvious pride on his face.

"Oh, honey, nobody is that good," she teases him.

"It also helps to be lucky," Ry'ac says.

"No kidding! I'm really excited to show you where we live. I picked up some computer games where you can pretend to be a warrior."

"Why would I pretend, when I am a warrior in truth?" he asks.

Shelby smiles, "Well, it's not as if there are going to be a whole lot of battles to fight in our safe little neighborhood in Colorado Springs."

"Ry'ac has chosen to help Bra'tac spread the word of our cause," Teal'c replies, putting a hand around his son in pride.

"No," Shelby says shaking her head, "His mother is dead."

"Maybe you shouldn't bring that up just now," Jack says awkwardly from the sidelines.

"You are his father, Teal'c. He's going to come live with us," she says in stunned speech.

"He is a man, a warrior," Teal'c replies, looking at his wife confused.

"He's sixteen, you can't just let him go off on his own!" she shouts.

"He's not on his own, he will be with me," Bra'tec replies offended.

"I know, Bra'tec, and there is no-one I trust more than you. And if Teal'c and I were both to die, I would want you to look after Rya'c. But the fact is, we're still alive. We don't need someone else to take care of the boy, because we are here to do it."

"I do not need anyone to care for me," Ry'ac says.

"Really?" Shelby says, spinning toward him, "Do you know how to do laundry, or cook yourself a meal?"

"That is women's work; I shall get a wife to do those things for me," Rya'c replies.

"A wife? Teal'c, your child is talking about getting married!" she exclaims, turning to her husband with the first 'wait until your father gets home' expression she's ever used.

"I would prefer it if you hired a domestic servant, and put off the finding of a wife until you had reached at least your twenty-fifth year," Teal'c replies.

"You married Shelby before she was twenty-five," Ry'ac pouts.

"Humans live for a shorter time than Jaffa. It was a necessity, in our case."

"And I was twenty-one, which is a whole lot different than sixteen."

"You had never been to war," the boy says.

"No?" she spats, "What the hell do you call fighting rats off your food? What do you think it's like living on the streets? A picnic? I have been taking care of myself and others ever since I could walk. And I could cook my own food and pay my own bills long before I met your father."

The boy rolls his eyes, "You've never been to war, you couldn't even defend yourself from the man who hit and raped you. You are no warrior, that is for sure," he says.

Shelby's eyes flash with fury, but she has more emotional control than the Jaffa teenager, "Teal'c, if I stay here, I am going to say something I'll regret. I'm going to go pick up the kids from school, and we're going to go to the park or the library or something. I'll expect to see you and your son at home by five o'clock," she says, spinning out of the room.

The gate room is silent after the outburst.

"Father, you're not going to make me live with _her_ are you?" Rya'c says with disdain.

"Show respect to your stepmother," Teal'c scolds.

Rya'c nods his head, looking remorseful.

Teal'c considers in the silence.

He puts a hand on his son's shoulder, "My son, go and grow strong among your people. But visit your father often."

"I will guard your son like a treasure," Bra'tac says, pulling his former student in the cross between a handshake and hug that they have.

Teal'c nods his head. But he doesn't really believe it. He is sure now that no Jaffa can love as a human. Fiercely, with no sybiote to calm you. Or to give up the things you need, sleep, showers, free time, personal space, and extra money in order to care for a child.

Jaffa's lives don't change much when they bring children into the world.

-0-0-0-

It's a quarter after five when Shelby returns with two excited little girls chanting about their new big brother and smelling like fast food fries.

Shelby's against fast food on principle, and never ate the stuff before her reluctant motherhood. But now, when she's tired or worried, and the kids start to whine, she caves and lets them have the starchy treats.

The house seems empty. Ry'ac is probably pouting.

She wonders if the room is right. When they'd moved out of the apartment, they'd gotten a rather big house. It had seemed odd to her, coming from poverty. But she'd needed it, and they'd had the money.

So now there were three bedrooms upstairs, and two downstairs. She and Teal'c shared the room next to the one the twins would have. Becky took the room across the hall, and Tammy, nearly a teenager, elected to sleep on a different floor.

Ever since they'd moved in, the room next to Tammy's had been ready for Rya'c. Not to live in, exactly; she hadn't predicted his mother's death. But she had been expecting that he'd come and stay weekends, or a month perhaps, at some time in the future.

But maybe the room was all wrong. She'd put in a comfortable bed, and a colorful comforter, but perhaps she should have chosen animal hides instead. She'd gotten a desk and a dresser for a boy who came from a culture fond neither of furniture or multiple changes in clothing.

Perhaps she'd miscalculated. Perhaps that room would only make him hate her more. Perhaps he'd say something as nasty as what he said to her to one of her little sisters.

Perhaps Teal'c was right, and this whole thing was a mistake.

But she knew that wasn't true. Rya'c was family, and you took care of family.

"I'm home," she calls down the stairs, and then across the house.

She receives no answer, so she looks in the downstairs rooms, which are empty. And then she goes into her own bedroom to find her husband meditating on the floor.

"Where is our brother?" Becky asks.

"In the camp of the rebel Jaffa," Teal'c replies.

"He's not coming?" Tammy says with disappointment in her voice, completely forgetting that she hadn't been too excited about this new sibling.

Shelby glares at her husband.

"He chose his own life," Teal'c says calmly.

"No, his father abandoned him," Shelby says. "Girls, can you go to your rooms?"

Tammy knows that tone of voice. She heard it once before when, when her sister left home. She walks over, and takes Teal'c's hand in hers.

Shelby looks at her sister with grief and anger in her voice. "Now."

"No," Becky Lynn says. It's the first time the obedient girl has ever been willfully disobedient. At least, when she's not tired or hungry.

"Go to your rooms, and pack," Shelby says with a dangerous edge in her voice.

"What?" the girls say.

"Now," she says, finally getting obedience from the girls.

"Are we going on vacation?" Teal'c asks.

"No, we're either moving to the rebel Jaffa camp, or the girls and I are going to be moving out."

"I do not understand."

"You left your son! He's a child, and you're abandoning him! It was bad enough when his mother was taking care of him. But now he's alone; you left your kid alone!" she says with the power, but not volume, of a yell.

"How does your leaving me, with our children, rectify this wrong?"

"Our babies," she says touching our stomach, "Haven't met you yet, and those girls are still pretty young. If I leave you now, it's better than if you leave us later."

"I am not going to leave you," he says, hugging her.

Shelby pulls away from him. "No, I have had too much leaving. I can't get left again."

"I will not leave you," he says, taking her chin in his hand. "I will retrieve Rya'c tomorrow."

"Do you think that's best for Rya'c?" Shelby asks a little nervously. She was so sure that she was right, a little bit ago. But Teal'c is better at the parenthood thing, and she doesn't want to mess the kid up.

Teal'c looks at her, "Sometimes I look at him, and see the man that Jaffa society says he is. Other times, I see the boy that Earth society says he is. I saw my son in battle. He is good at it. But I do not want him to fight."

"He's going to hate being here," she says.

"He needs family. Grief needs family."

The two of them rest their heads against one another in a moment of silent meditation.


	79. Part 7 Chapter 3

Shelby walks out of the bedroom. "Girls!" she calls. Neither of them actually went to their rooms. They're standing, terrified, just a bit down the hallway. "I'm sorry about before. I shouldn't have told you to go pack."

"I don't want Teal'c to leave," Becky whines.

"I am not going anywhere," Teal'c informs them.

"Well, except to go get Rya'c tomorrow," Shelby adds.

Tammy is looking her big sister up and down, obviously confused.

"Honey?" Shelby asks her sister.

"I don't understand, you had a fight," the girl says in shock.

"Yes, that happens sometimes, adults have fights. I shouldn't have included you guys in it," Shelby says.

"But you had a fight, and Teal'c didn't hurt you, and no-one is leaving," the girl says in a voice which is clearly puzzled.

Teal'c's heart breaks within him. He can't stand the thought of this girl being so puzzled by something which is so natural, so obvious to him.

"Well, Tammy, that is the way things should turn out when adults fight. And I want you to know Teal'c isn't going to hurt me, and he isn't going to leave us."

"And you're not going to leave?" Becky asks nervously.

"No, I'm not going to leave either. Because we're family, and families stick together, forever, no matter what," Shelby says, looking at her husband with eyes full of apology.

"And that is the same reason why I will retrieve your brother tomorrow," Teal'c says.

"And he's an alien, too?" Becky asks, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet.

"Keep in mind that from his point of view you're the alien," Shelby points out.

"That's a wild thought!" Becky says with a grin. Then she wanders off, singing, "I am an alien. You are an alien. Let's all be aliens together!" in a sing song voice.

Shelby can tell that her other sister is going to need just a bit more reassurance, so she walks over, and pulls her into a big hug.

"I can really trust it? It's not going to fall apart?" the girl whispers, almost below the level that Shelby can hear.

"Yeah, you can," Shelby whispers back, just as quietly.

-0-0-0-

"Where is your mom?" Daniel asks as he comes in to see Cassie cooking dinner. Ever since the teenager got her license last year, she's been picking up her siblings from school, or daycare when it's not Will's preschool day, and watching until five her mother got home from work.

But Daniel had to work until eight tonight, and Janet still isn't home.

"I don't know," the teenager says without much care.

"What do you mean, you don't know! Didn't she come home?"

"Relax! She was home, and then she left a little bit ago."

"Did she say where she was going?"

"I don't know," the teenager says with another shrug.

Daniel grabs the phone, and tries the family cell phone*. He told Janet to take it with her if she ever went somewhere late at night. The phone rings on the counter.

"Da…" Daniel begins to swear, but sees six children's eyes focused on him, "… nabit," he finishes. Daniel is debating just going and looking for his wife, when he sees that Olivia has solved all of her story problem math homework problems wrong, and that supper is just about done, and after that Will will need to be put to sleep. So he shoves the worry down in his stomach, and goes to work.

-0-0-0-

Daniel doesn't hear Janet come home. He's up to his elbows in suds at the time. It's only when he enters the hallway with his son in his arms that he sees her.

"Hey, where were you?" he asks.

"Shopping," she says with a huge grin on her face as she slips past him, and goes Will's room.

"Ok, well, next time, tell your husband, because Cassie isn't great with the passing on messages."

"Well, that makes sense, she isn't so great with the listening," Janet says with a laugh.

Will starts to squirm in his arms, and Daniel sets the boy down to get him into his pajamas. "What'd you get our boy?" he asks looking toward the bags his wife brought home.

"Well, it could be for our girl, too," Janet says.

"Olivia?" Daniel asks. Why is his wife buying something for their eleven year old at a baby store?

Janet pulls out a tiny onesie.

Daniel talks to Will, "Is mommy being silly? You can't fit into that!" Then his eyes widen, and he looks up at his wife. She nods. He stands up to give her a hug.

"Daddy, jamblers!" Will demands.

"We'll be happy more later," Daniel says to his wife before turning back to his son.

**The Next Day**

Shelby stands at the window, watching as their car pulls into the driveway. Rya'c gets out, and makes some comment which, judging by his facial expression, isn't an entirely upbeat one.

Shelby takes a deep breath and opens the door.

Rya'c stares at her stomach. "Is she with child?" he asks in the tone that American teenagers usually reserve for something a bit more crude.

"Yes, my wife is bearing my twins," Teal'c replies.

"You didn't tell him I was pregnant before?" Shelby asks.

"We were kind of fighting a battle," Rya'c sneers.

"Speak respectfully to your stepmother," Teal'c says.

"Speak respectfully to your stepmother," Rya'c mocks.

"Rya'c!" Teal'c says fiercely.

The kid hangs his head, and walks into the house.

"We are in for a fun week," Shelby says. Teal'c doesn't say anything, he just gives her shoulder a squeeze.

"Hi, I'm your new sister," Becky says cheerfully.

"No, you're not, you're my dad's second wife's little sister. That makes us nothing," he says.

"But we're going to live in the same house now, and my Teal'c is your Daddy, so that makes you my brother," the girl says with confidence.

"No, that makes us roommates."

"Well, speaking of rooms, I'll show you to yours," Shelby says.

"I have a room?" Ray'c asks.

"When we first procured this house, Shelby insisted on preparing a room for any visits you might make."

Rya'c's face has that hungry look on it that Sheby's seen in the mirror. The look of someone who doesn't expect love, and gets just a little scrap of it. But the look disappears as quickly as it appears. The kid is much too proud to admit he is touched.

"It's downstairs."

"In the dungeon?" Rya'c says sarcastically.

"If you're in the dungeon, so am I," Tammy says, coming up the stairs at the sound of the commotion.

"Ah, the other midget roommate," Rya'c says.

"I'm not a midget," Tammy objects.

"Right, well, I'm all gate-lagged, and need to kel-no-reem, so where is this room?" Rya'c says.

"Right, the bed was a stupid move, because you don't sleep," Shelby says, flinching.

"What?" the two girls ask, turning toward the teenager.

"Jaffa don't sleep. You guys don't even know that? Seriously, you're stupid," he mutters.

"Hey, you do not call them that!" Shelby scolds.

"Ok, then I'll just call you that," Rya'c says.

Teal'c raises his hand to give his son a quick smack on the back of his head. Shelby stops the hand in midair. "We do not hit in this family."

"Let me get this straight. I can't be punished, and the boss is this girl? This is going to be a fun experience," Rya'c says.

"If you think my range of punishment only exists in the physical realm you are mistaken, and Shelby is not a girl, but a women."

"Really, because she was six when I was born. Not exactly a mother-figure."

"But you will treat her as you treated your mother, doing anything else would dishonor the way that your mother raised you. Did your mother raise you to treat women as if they were nothing?"

Rya'c eyes well up. "I am sorry, father."

Teal'c looks at Shelby, pointing.

"Ah… I'm sorry…" He pauses, obviously not sure what to call her when he's not being sarcastic and crass.

"It's ok if you want to call me Shelby, my sisters do," Shelby prompts.

"Thanks," Rya'c says, with those hungry eyes from before.

"When we moved into his house, I acquired mats and candles for your kel-no-reem. They are in the closet of your room," Teal'c says.

"So you guys never sleep?" Becky asks, amazed.

"No, they only need to meditate for a few hours a night," Shelby says.

"I want to be a Jaffa," Becky proclaims.

"You want them to put an evil parasitic alien in your stomach?" Rya'c asks her.

"We didn't exactly share that part with the girls," Shelby says with a flinch.

"I didn't understand all those words, but they sounded bad. They're bad, right? You've got something bad in your stomachs?" Becky asks.

"Dude, you're an alien with another alien inside?" Tammy says, looking terrified.

"I'll show you," Rya'c says.

"Oh, there will be no symbiote displays," Shelby says.

"Or?" Rya'c challenges.

"Or you will be required to scrub the floors," Teal'c says with a brow-raise.

"Seriously?" Rya'c says.

Teal'c nods.

"Fine!" Rya'c says, storming down the stairs.

"You are a REALLY good parent," Shelby whispers to Teal'c.

"I'll get you the book I read," he whispers back.

"I just wish I didn't have to sleep so I could get all of this figured out faster," she says.

***Remember people, this story is based in our recent past when it was more common for a family rather than a person to own a cell phone.**

**Snotty teenagers are fun to write, although NOT fun to deal with.**


	80. Part 7 Chapter 4

"Father, there are people sitting on chairs outside," Rya'c says dismally.

"They are the Madisons, our neighbors," Teal'c replies.

"How long are they going to sit there?" Rya'c asks, looking out the window with a longing on his face.

Teal'c blinks at him for a second, before he realizes the cause of his son's discomfort. "Rya'c, do you need to make waters?"

"They don't do it in front of people on this planet do they?" the teenager says.

"The humans of earth frequently do this act in front of one another, but this is only true of public restrooms, and not private houses."

"What is a restroom?" the teenager says squirming.

"That is what the people of Earth use to relieve themselves in. It's a room of the house. Come with me."

"They just go in the house! Primitives!" Rya'c explains.

"They use pipes to take all of the waste far away," Teal'c explains to his son as they prepare for a more complete tour of the house.

-0-0-0-

Rya'c suddenly feels very alone. His father is deep in kal-no-rem, and the rest of the family is asleep. It's strange to think of adults sleeping. Of course, children do it, before their primta. It's not uncommon for a child to fall asleep every now and again in the years right after. Once in a while a women very pregnant might fall into something like sleep, shortly before the child within her comes to term. And often, sleep returns to the old as the last symbiote dies within them.

His mother slept sometimes, in the last days.

He's finding it hard to remember what sleep as like. A great nothingness, he thinks, but certainly sleep was more than that.

In a Jaffa camp, there is no night. Well, of course there is night, but not night like these humans have. There is never a darkness that is not pierced by fire, never a silence that is not pierced by laughter, never this great waking nothingness.

He turns on the light.

Not because he's afraid of the dark. Jaffa aren't afraid of anything.

They showed him how to play the video game before they went to bed, and told him he could play it if he turned the volume down low. But he doesn't understand how moving your thumbs makes the things on the screen move, and every time that he tries, the figure on the screen dies a horrific death.

And it reminds him that his mother is dead.

There are books to read. Things to get him adjusted to Earth. There are travel guides meant for people coming to this country from a place called Africa, which his father told him is only a little like Jaffa culture. There are books on Earth history ranging from those meant for children to the more advanced. There are books of Tau'ri magic, which they call science.

But Rya'c doesn't feel like reading.

He starts to run through the motions with his training staff. Master Bra'tac has been telling him that a warrior must be silent, what better time to practice that skill than now. The feeling of the motions calms him. Each foot fall feels right when it is placed in the right place. Each arm feels correct only when it is swung in exactly the same way.

When he flubs a move, he makes himself do it ten times correctly, twice what Master Bra'tac requires, but he feels like he needs to punish himself right now.

He begins to spar with an imaginary enemy, but he is losing even before it begins.

Because even a Jaffa can't cheat death.

She must have been standing there for quite some time before he sees her. Standing there in her bathrobe, she almost doesn't look pregnant. He almost tosses her a stick as an invitation to join him before he remembers, and he gets angry all over again.

"You're really good," she tells him.

"I should be fighting to free my people," he says.

She considers him for a while, and then says, "There are many ways to fight."

"You know nothing of war," he sneers.

"Not so long ago in my country, there were slaves. And a lot of people didn't own slaves, but also didn't think that there was anything wrong with people owning slaves. And this women wrote a book, and she helped end ended slavery. And there was a man, even less time ago, in another country on my planet. And his people were being treated unfairly. And he taught them to make their own things, instead of buying it from another country, and he taught them to resist without fighting, and he make his country free."

"That is fine for creatures as weak as Tau'ri," Rya'c says, beginning to fling his stick in large arches again above his head. Anything to keep the tears that are brimming from falling.

"I don't know what it's like to lose a mother. But my dad walked out on me, and I know that sucked. I'm ok with your anger, kid. I'm ok with whatever you've got. And I don't want to be your mother. But I do want to take care of you. And I am gonna love ya, no matter what."

And the stick falls to the ground.

Rya'c picks it up, and they both pretend that his dropping it had nothing to do with her words.

"I know you already kel-no-reemed, but would you be interested in some tek-no-reem?" she asks, knowing they come both use some time respecting one another.

"Humans can do that?" he asks, surprised.

"Well, I try," she says, heaving her pregnant body onto the floor. She can't quite sit cross legged, but she manages to wiggle into a comfortable position that achieves the same effect.

He sits down next to her, a bit awkwardly. He's never 'reemed with a human before. When he was a boy, before he was a Jaffa, his parents used to hold him a 'reem each night to get him to fall asleep. When he was older, and his father returned from battle, or his mother and he had had a squabble about some unfinished chore, they had 'reemed. And of course, every training session with Master Bra'tec ended with it.

But she was practically a stranger.

Her mind is reaching toward his, grasping with more desperation than a Jaffa's ever would. But his mind reaches out and meets her gently.

He thought she was soft, but she's hard as nails. The pain of her childhood, the abuse he'd thrown in her face just hours ago, is fresher and deeper than he'd ever imagined.

It's worse than a battle somehow, although that doesn't make sense to the Jaffa.

He thought she was young, but she's old enough. There is some point, when you are independent enough that you don't need anyone, and yet wise enough to know that everyone needs someone, when age stops mattering. And she reached that point decades ago, when she was much younger than he is now.

Shelby is human, so she can't read his mind with the ease he reads hers with. But she knows that he is a scared little lost boy. He's scared of death, which is still so new to him, even though he grew up in a society of warriors. And he's scared that his father will not love him. And he's scared that he'll never be able to navigate this strange new planet. That he'll be a failure at human life, which would somehow be worse than any other kind of failure, because of course, humans are beneath him.

And she isn't good at radiating out a certain kind of thought. Usually when she tries, it completely breaks her concentration. Teal'c can fill her with happiness or romance or peace just by thinking it when they're connected by tek-no-rem. But, she can only give the thinnest trace of comfort, and image, and the feelings attached.

So she sends to him her baby blanket. The real thing having been lost a long time ago. Something her father had given her, at least she thinks, she can't remember a time when her father was around. But it was soft, and warm and fussy. And the outside was covered in a silk which could be rubbed against your lips to make a terrifying day palatable.

And then they pull away, and look at each other finding that hours have passed. Shelby tries to think of something to say. She wants to talk about the experience, to explain it. But it's deeper than words, and the teenager is quite right when he picks up his stick, and bashfully pretends that his step mother isn't even in the room.

"Goodnight," she says softly as she walks out of the room.

**The Next Day**

"Hi, I need to register my step-son for school," Shelby says meekly at the front office.

"I'll take you to the counselor," the women says taking them down several corridors before taking them to a room that looks like it's little more than a closet, even though it's nicely decorated.

"'Nother new one for you," the secretary says with a smile.

The woman smiles looking from one to the other. "My step-son just moved here from Africa. His father is at work today, so I thought I'd get him registered."

"Does he speak English?" the counselor says to Shelby.

Rya'c snorts.

Shelby gives the boy a glare, "English is his native language, as it is in some former colonial parts of Africa," Shelby says, purposely keeping the teenager's origins vague. "He reads and writes well, but he's never been to school before."

"Never been to school?" the women asks pushing the glasses up to the top of her head to get a better look at them, "How are your math skills?"

Rya'c fidgets, "I'm good at figures."

"Algebra?" the counselor presses.

Rya'c glances at his step mom.

"That's the kind of math where they put letters in."

Rya'c looks down, "I don't think we have that among the Jaffa."

Shelby rests her had on his shoulder to alleviate his shame. He shrugs it off quickly. "But I have learned my lesson well. I am a warrior," the child says proudly.

The counselor's eyebrows shoot up.

"Right, he fought his first battle not too long ago. His mother just died, and he's not too happy about the fact that his father and I moved him to America to go to school, instead of staying with a family friend and working as a soldier."

"More her than my father," he says.

"He just witnessed his mother's death?" the women asks.

"Yes, she was ill," he says, staring at the wall silently.

"And then he worked as a soldier," the women says.

"I saved my father, and my master," Rya'c says, looking at her with pride again.

"Master? Were you a slave?" the woman asks.

"We are all slaves," Rya'c says calmly.

"He means that mostly symbolically," Shelby says quickly, "His people are forced to fight for someone who claims they are god. But he was never forced to work for someone. The 'master' is the person that trained him in martial arts and meditation. His culture just didn't have schools."

"How old is he?" she asks.

"Sixteen," Shelby says.

The counselor, "With where his skills are, I just don't see how we could get him to graduate on time. He just won't have enough credits."

"We don't really expect that. What we want is for him to be safe, and to learn," Shelby says with a twist of her stomach, wondering if this was really the best thing for this child.

"We can provide that. We have a remedial math class, it's not worth any credit, but it will help him build on his basic skills. Then we can enroll him in a regular Algebra I class."

"I thought he was taking the remedial class."

"Yes, and that is to help him get through algebra. He will probably be able to take English I without too much trouble. We'll put him in a sophomore U.S. History class, since there isn't a social studies required as a freshman. Then, of course, there will be a freshman physical science. Then we might want to try a study hall. If we were pushing hard for credits I'd suggest another English or perhaps a physical education class, but as it is…"

"He'll have plenty of time to do his homework at home. I think that he would really enjoy a gym class."

The counselor sits at her computer to make a schedule. "Please have a seat."

"What is physical science?" Teal'c whispers.

"Tau'ri magic," she whispers back.

The counselor glares at her.

"That's what he calls it," she says with a shrug.

"Why are students required to learn the history of this country?" he whispers again.

Shelby shrugs, "But you'll do it."

"I can tell you the history of the Jaffa people," he offers, feeling very inadequate.

"I'd like to know some of that. Your father has told me only a little. We've mostly focused on the sparring, which I can't do until the babies come, the meditation, and the language."

"You speak Goa'uld?" Rya'c says in surprise. Shelby wasn't confident enough in her knowledge of the language to speak it the last time she visited the Jaffa camp.

"I am improving, although still…." she pauses, not remembering the correct grammar for 'not very good'.

The counselor looks up, "You're sure he isn't an English language learner? Some of them seem to speak well, but their higher language learning is compromised."

"He's bilingual. He's been speaking English and Goa'uld since birth."

"I've never heard of that language before."

"No, I doubt anyone would have," she says with a smile.

"Ok, I have your schedule here. I'll have someone show you around the first day," the counselor says.

"Just the first day?" Shelby says, "He's not used to institutions like this."

"We'll have a student volunteer take them from class to class for as long as it's necessary," the counselor assures Shelby.

"Listen, his father and I can help him with work at home. He will have plenty of time."

"That's great," the counselor says. "I'll walk through his schedule with him now. You can pick him up after school."

"That's it?" Shelby says nervously, "I took the day off…"

"There really isn't anything for you to do here," the counselor says. So Shelby gives one last smile to her Jaffa step-son, before she walks out of the school.


	81. Part 7 Chapter 5

The first class was bad enough. The students all read from the middle of some book with words that he didn't understand. The second class of the day is completely beyond comprehension, Rya'c thinks grumpily to himself. The teacher is writing numbers and letter and parenthesis on the shiny white thing, and then he turns to the class and ask for an answer.

And they answer him. All of the students tell him what the answer to his math problem without hesitation.

And Rya'c doesn't even see where the question is. He looks around the room at all of the students sitting in their desk.

"Why?" he asks.

The teacher blinks at him. Maybe they do speak a different language here. He hasn't understood a single thing that has happened since Shelby left.

"Why are we just sitting here?"

"Young man, you're being insubordinate!" the teacher exclaims.

But he didn't give Rya'c an answer, so he stands up and leaves. He takes the books with him, because he wants to show them to his father. He is sure that as soon as his father sees the sort of things they want him to do, he will not make him go to school anymore. Maybe he won't let him go back to Chulak, since his father's new wife is so against war (even though she married a warrior). But at least they might not make him come back to this place.

He walks out of the doors, and remembers that it's a bit cold outside. He had on the outer garment they wear in this country (it was not called a cloak, although it sounded like it) when he came to school. They'd made him put it in a thing called a locker, and he wasn't up to doing battle with the metal dragon then. So he just starts walking.

He realizes, not long in, that he doesn't actually know how to get home. He's had lots of survival training, including how to take care of yourself if you get lost in the woods. But these aren't woods, and none of his training is going to do him any good here.

So he just keeps walking. How big can this place called Colorado Springs be, anyway?

-0-0-0-

Pete has never been that good at guessing the ages of people, but this kid looks like he should really be in school. He is debating whether or not to stop the kid when he sees some textbooks under his arm. Well, that settles it.

He pulls the car over to the side of the road. "Hey kid!" he says.

"I am not a goat," the kid responds, without stopping.

"You need to show some respect for authority," Pete informs him.

The kid stops, and blinks at him, "I am new to this country, and am unfamiliar with what your dress means. What kind of an authority are you?"

"I'm a policeman," Pete tells him, because he gets the odd feeling that this kid isn't actually messing with him.

The kid tilts his head at him, "I don't know what that means."

"I enforce the laws. Now tell me, aren't you supposed to be in school?"

"Indeed," the kid says.

That word, and that face bring back a memory for him. But he knows it isn't possible. That man didn't have a kid this age. It's just one of those strange coincidences that happen when you deal with the public for long enough.

"Get in the car, son, I'll take you back to school."

"You are not my father, and I'm not going back to the school."

"You have to go to school, it is the law," Pete tells him, not knowing that the child is actually over the age of mandatory school attendance.

"Your country has strange laws. They will not allow children to fight, and they force them to go to school, and learn about strange numbers and books which do not make sense," he says.

"Every kids feels like that."

"Where I come from, there are no schools."

"You really did just get here didn't you?" Pete asks softly.

Rya'c nods his head.

"Look, can I call your parents for you. I'm sure they're worried about you. Maybe you can work out something about the schooling with them."

Rya'c sets his jaw, "My step-mother was forced to leave me at school today. She told me before we left the house that we would merely be getting information about the schooling, but in truth she forced me to go to the classes without her."

"Well, I'm sure she didn't know what the school had in mind for you. It wasn't her fault."

"I would appreciate help in getting home, it appears that I do not remember which direction home is," the child says.

"Ok, well, what is your step-mom's name?"

"Shelby; and the name of my father is Teal'c."

Pete doesn't have to ask for their last names, which is a good thing, since Rya'c doesn't know them.

"Let me give you a ride," he says kindly to the man-boy before him.

Rya'c nods his head, not because he particularly likes the idea, or particularly trusts the man, but simply because he can see that this is his best way of getting out of the situation without getting into too much more trouble.

-0-0-0-

Shelby's heart stops for a split second when she sees a policemen at the door. She's sure that Teal'c is dead. And then she realizes that it wouldn't be a policeman that would come to tell her if that was the case.

And then she sees her stepson.

"What are you doing? I left you at school!" she shouts at him.

He hangs his head, and doesn't say anything. Pete thinks to himself that this child has been taught how to deal with authority, and can't help but wonder what methods were employed in the lesson.

Shelby turns to him, "I'm sorry, Officer, I swear he's not truant, though. He's sixteen. And I wouldn't just let him wonder the streets. I didn't know where he was." She stops herself, realizing that what she is saying is the opposite of a defense, "I know that's not good parenting. What I mean was, I thought he was at school."

"It's ok. It sounds to me like he was just a little overwhelmed with his new country and school. He might just need a bit of time to adjust."

"Thank you," she says looking at the man gratefully.

He nods his head, and shuts the door behind himself as he exits the room. She turns to her step-son, regarding him for a second as she decides whether to yell at him or hug him.

"Why did you leave?" she asks.

"I didn't understand what they were talking about, and I asked the teacher why we had to sit down, and he didn't have an answer."

"That's what you do in school," Shelby says softly.

"Well, I've never sat down that much in my whole life," he says. Shelby's never seen a Goa'uld ship, so she doesn't know that they don't have any chairs. But she has seen Jaffa camps, and she knows that the only place they have to sit are the cushions on the ground which are only used for meditation purposes.

"You didn't know the way home, did you?" she asks.

"My survival training was of no use," he says.

"I'm going to call the school, and tell them that you're going to start tomorrow. But you can't leave again. You could get lost or hurt. You have to do school, even if it's hard."

"You told the police officer that I don't."

"Well, that's because I didn't want him getting us in trouble. It would mostly be the parents he comes down on if you weren't in school. I don't mean the law is going to make you get your schooling. I mean that your family is."

"It didn't make any sense," he says, thrusting the math textbook and a paperback copy of Macbeth at her. "Maybe we only _think_ that Tau'ri English and Jaffa English are the same."

"Oh, Rya'c, I can understand why you were confused. This is really old English. Trust me, some of your classmates were probably having trouble with it, too. But don't worry. It's a story that you can really get into. There is war and battles in it," Shelby says.

"I would rather fight a battle than read about one," he grumbles.

"I'm going to print you the Sparknotes on this off the computer before I go to bed. If you read that, you're going to get a general picture of what the story is about, and then it should make more sense. It's probably a good thing that you don't sleep a whole lot, we're going to need that time in the next couple of weeks. I think we should probably work on algebra right now, though, because you're going to need help with it. What page were you on?"

"I don't know," Rya'c says, trying to open the book with his fingers. They are so clumsy at the task that Shelby realizes with a sharp pain that the boy has never seen a book before. She's expecting him to be able to deal with high school when he can't even open his textbook. "Ok, let's start with something else. We'll see what math you DO know, and go from there."

-0-0-0-

Shelby discovers that her step-son's math skills are not at all bad. They just make a sharp drop off as soon as things went from the concrete to the abstract. He works next to her for five hours, with only a short lunch break. And by the end of it, he's completed the first five pages of his textbook.

It isn't a bad showing, and considering that only a few weeks had passed since the beginning of school, she is beginning to think that this was not as impossible as it first seemed, if only because the child doesn't sleep.

**The Next Day**

He was required to be here, Rya'c told himself over and over again. It was required of him, and that was reason enough.

He was discouraged once again. He had spent most of the night with the small paperback. He'd read background information, and the book twice just to gain the most basic understanding of plot. Then he'd poured over reference materials in order to draw out the theme and symbols, after first learning what all of these words meant.

He was certain that whatever they talked about in first period, today he would be prepared.

But he was wrong, because today was a day that the people of the Tau'ri called Wednesday. And apparently, in Mrs. Morris' class, Wednesday was grammar day. He didn't know what grammar was exactly, but he did know that it had something to do with saying the words like "gerund" or "participle" when they called on you.

At least Mrs. Morris was merciful enough not to call on him. Although he suspected it had something to do with the note the counselor had slipped to her at the beginning of class.

Rya'c was sure the note said something like "this boy has no honor and he runs from challenges".

He dreaded the class with math even more. Before the class began, he walked up to the teacher, and said, "My actions yesterday were without honor. I will not undertake them again," and then he handed the teacher the pages of homework that he had spent the afternoon before working on.

"I didn't assign that," the teacher says.

"I was uncertain what work to complete," the Jaffa says, taken aback by his unaccepted apology and uncelebrated work.

"Look at the board," the teacher says, pointing to the shiny white thing in the front of the room.

There are some letters, and numbers on it, but the boy can't figure out what they mean.

When the teacher tells the rest of the students to open their books, Rya'c flips through the book, clumsily, because he is still new at this, until he finds the page with the same pictures on it as the student that is next to him.

Within minutes, he knows that nothing the teacher says is going to make sense to him. So he begins to stare at the page in front of him, slowly absorbing the content, and trying the figures one way and then another until he starts to get the answers in the back of the book, carefully marked by Shelby the day before.

When he knows how to do the problems, he starts at number one, and does them one by one until he reaches the bottom of the page.

The student assigned by the counselor comes and gets him at the end of the period to take him to his next class.

He isn't even sure what this class is studying, but Shelby told him that if you sit down and put a pencil on top of a notebook, teachers think that it is a good thing.

"Hello! You must be my new student," the teacher says, kneeling next to his desk.

He nods his head gravely.

"Where did you move from?" she asks cheerfully.

He forgets the lie answer. He knows it is a continent that they have on this world where most of the people have skin like his. He shrugs.

"Well, ok, I'm glad you're here. I'm Mrs. Jeske. I've got an orientation packet for you that explains how my class works. I go over it the first couple days of school, but you can get the idea by reading it tonight. Today we're going to be taking notes on acids and bases. We're almost done with the unit, so don't feel bad if you don't understand. But if you read Chapter Three in your book, it will help you understand," she says, handing him a textbook with a thin pack of paper on top of it.

"Thank you," he whispers as she walks away.

The teacher than turns from him to ask hulking figure next to him if he won last night's football game, and then a quiet girl about her art. The girl takes out a piece of manga to show the teacher. While she oogles over it, she greets another girl at the door, and asks her if her weekend was alright. The voice implies there is a secret message in the words.

The bell rings, and the teacher walks down the aisle, greeting each student she hasn't yet talked to by name as she reaches the front of the room.

"Oh, my darlings, it's time for lighting review. Rya'c, I don't expect you to know these answers yet, you'll be as quick as the rest of them before long. Ok, pH stands for…"

Together the class murmurs, "Power of hydrogen."

"Water has as pH of…" She prompts.

"7," most whisper, although a few say other things.

"Water has a pH of," she prompts again.

"7," everyone, including Rya'c courses together. That earns him an extra smile from his teacher.

"Acids have a high or low pH?" she asks.

"High," they say.

"And bases are…"

"Low," they complete.

"Great, open your books to page 52," Mrs. Jesek says.

Rya'c starts on page one, looking at the other books for what picture he needs to look for.

"Helper!" Mrs. Jeske calls.

Three student wiggle their hands eagerly. She points to a tall thin girl, and then Rya'c. Rya'c's ears go red in shame. The girl walks across kneels next to him.

"The page numbers are on the bottom," she points. "Do you know what 52 looks like?"

He nods, "It was so simple."

"Mrs. Jeske says it's all simple when you know it, and impossible until you do," the girl whispers as she flips to the correct page, and returns to her seat.

"Write what I do, listen to what I say," the teacher reminds the class as she takes up her pen, and begins the lecture.


	82. Part 7 Chapter 6

**One Week Later**

Janet is surprised to see her daughter arrive at her office near the end of her shift. "Hello, honey, who vouched you on?" she asks, referring to the fact that in order to get onto a military base, they had to have permission from someone that worked there.

"Shelby. I told her I needed to see you."

"Ok, do you want to go out to eat?" Janet asks.

"No," the girl fidgets, "I wanted to see you as a doctor, not as a mother. I know that really isn't possible. I'd go to another doctor, but I think this might have something to do with my classified origins. I know I'm probably going to get in trouble for this, but it's reached the point where I really don't care anymore."

"Come on in to my office," Janet says.

Janet sits down behind her desk, trying to take on the doctor role. Her daughter sits down in the only other chair in the room. If whatever this is required a physical exam, they're going to have to do it in the public infirmary, Janet thinks nervously.

"Is it possible that my physical differences could allow me to be allergic to people from Earth?" Cassie asks.

"Sweetie, you're around people of Earth all the time," Janet says.

"Well, what if I'm only allergic to parts of the people of Earth?" she asks.

"What parts?" Janet presses.

There is a long silence in which Cassie looks everywhere but at her mother. Finally she blurts, "I had sex."

Janet's eyebrows shoot up, "Dominic, I assume?"

"Duh. It's not like I would cheat on him."

"Ok, did you use protection?" Janet asks carefully.

Her daughter nods.

Janet smiles, "Well, that kind of eliminates you being allergic to his fluids, doesn't it? If they didn't actually touch you."

"But I feel like I'm on fire!" Cassie objects.

"Honey, you know how I can't put on gloves when I exam you?" Janet asks.

"Yeah, that's because of my latex allergy."

"And what are condoms made out of?"

Cassie closes her eyes looking relieved, "So it will just go away, like the rash on my arm?"

"Yes, and I can give you something for it in the meantime," Janet says.

"Well, I'm glad I'm not permanently damaged, but that means I'll never be able to have sex without having a chance of making a baby, doesn't it?"

"No, honey, you are not the only person in the world that has ever had this allergy. They make special condoms for people who have this problem. They are a little bit more likely to break though, so I'd like to put you on birth control pills, if you're ok with it."

Cassie blinks in surprise, and then nods her head.

"I'm so glad you came to be about this. I'm sure you were really worried about it."

"You have no idea," the girl says, breathing air out quickly.

"We'll get the medicine you need on the way home from work. Do you mind if we switch to mom mode for a little bit? Because I can't really separate the two roles."

Cassie flinches, "Please don't tell Dad."

"Honey, married people shouldn't keep secrets from one another."

Cassie is just about to start begging when she realizes that she has a much better option. "Doctor patient confidentiality. You legally can't tell him."

"Yeah, well, I know that my daughter isn't very likely to sue me."

"However, I do know that you're a very ethical women. One that would be unwilling to break the law even if she wouldn't be likely to be caught."

Janet sighs, "Maybe the conversation we're about to have is going to change your mind."

"I doubt it. There is no way you could ever be as scary as Dad."

"I'm not trying to be scary," Janet says. "I'm ok with the way that you're handling it. You waited a long time after you started dating to get to know someone. You only have one sexual partner, and you're wearing protection. You're almost seventeen years old Cassie, that's an ok age to lose your virginity."

Cassie looks at her mother in surprise, "On Hanka, if people found out you were having pre-marital sex they would kill you."

"Well, we're not on Hanka, babe."

"But most parents wouldn't be this cool. I mean, most parents try to do anything to keep their kids from having sex," Cassie says.

"And most of them fail. And it just ends up with the kids doing more dangerous sexual behavior. I'd much rather keep the lines of communication open with you. Help and guide you to pick safe behavior."

"And Dad really feels the same way?"

"I actually have no idea how your father feels about this. He and I have never actually discussed this. But I would be willing to feel him out, and see how he feels. If he's going to be ok with it I'll tell him. Otherwise, it can just be something between us girls."

"Really?" Cassie asks.

"Really," Janet says with a smile, "Now you want to go get your medicine?"

"Yes, please!" Cassie says.

"While we're at the drugstore, I'll buy you some latex-free condoms. You really shouldn't be having sex for a week or so, though."

"Ok," Cassie nods her head with relief.

-0-0-0-

It's not really the best night of the week to have such a serious conversation, Janet knows. It's one of the two nights a week when her husband brings home his work. He's reading something in Babylonian, or maybe Arabic. Janet has never learned to tell the difference between any of the scripts that her husband likes to read. She tried to have him teach her once, since he liked talking about his work so much. But he just couldn't understand why she wasn't able to understand it easier, and she was happier living in ignorance than showing her ignorance off.

"Daniel, how old were you when you lost your virginity?" she asks.

He looks up from the book at her with a puzzled look on his face, "I was in college."

"So, like, sixteen?" she asks hopefully, knowing that her husband went to college younger than most people did.

"Grad school," he corrects.

"So, nineteen?"

"Twenty-two," he says, putting the book away, and giving her his full attention. "What is this about?"

"I was just curious, we never really talked about our sexual past before," she covers quickly.

"Ok, well, if it hasn't mattered until now, why does it suddenly matter?" he asks nervously.

"I was just thinking about being young, and wondering about what it was like for you to be young.

"Well, I've had three partners: Sara, Sha'uri, and you," he says.

"Three?" she asks, eyes bulging.

"And I regret that it wasn't only two. I think that waiting until you're married is a beautiful thing. It has some real benefits for the cultures that choose to practice it."

"Daniel, sweetie, _we _didn't wait until we were married," Janet points out helpfully.

"True, but by the time we had sex, I was pretty sure that's where it was going, weren't you?"

"Not really, we hadn't been dating that long."

"Long enough," he says with confidence. "So, I told you how many partners I had. What about you?"

"I don't think I want to share," she says.

"Are we in the double digits?" he asks with the sort of lighthearted tone someone might if they were playing a guessing game, although there is some depth beneath it.

"Eight," she says, looking away from him.

"That's ok," he says, scooting over and taking her hand.

"I was fifteen," she says.

His eyebrows go up, "Fifteen?"

"Yeah," she nods.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"Don't be sorry," she says, sounding offended.

"You were a kid. Someone took advantage of you. Why wouldn't I feel sorry for you?"

"I was not a kid. I was a teenager, and I was in love. I choose it. No-one made me do it. I don't even regret it."

"So, what, do you wish that you were still with this guy?"

"Of course not, that was decades ago," she says.

"But it was love?" he asks.

She nods her head.

"Well, apparently you and I have different takes on what love is," he says.

"What?" she says.

He touches her face, "Love doesn't end. I have only been in love twice."

She swallows, and looks away from him even though he still has her chin in his hand, and she can't get far.

"Honey, I'm saying I love you," he says with a smile.

"You're saying you love me more than I love you."

"I don't doubt your love," he says.

"I worry about that sometimes, that I can't even love like you can. That your heart is bigger than mine."

"You? The woman who adopts orphans, including a six-foot-tall orphan husband. The one brings children into the world even though it makes you sick? You're the most loving women in the world."

"I'm sorry, Daniel, about the eight," she says humbly.

He tilts his forehead against hers, "I've got you now. I'm not going to worry about before."

**The Next Day**

Cassie is waiting outside of her bedroom door when Janet leaves. "How did he take it?"

Janet sighs, "We're not telling your father. We ended up talking about my own history, and I don't think he'd be very accepting of this."

"Your history?" Cassie's eyebrows shoot up, "Is there a particular reason you were so understanding yesterday?"

"Nothing too scandalous. I made no worse decisions than you."

"So are you ok with keeping this secret from dad?"

Her mother nods her head, and pulls her daughter in for a hug.


	83. Part 7 Chapter 7

**A Week Later**

Rya'c was beginning to understand more and more of how school worked. Mrs. Jeske had explained to him what the numbers on the board of other classes meant, and he had started completing his assignments on time. He had read four books on grammar, two on Tau'ri history, and the entire textbook of Tau'ri magic.

After the first test, he'd even figured out how to take tests.

So when they give him his report card, and tell him that it explains how he's doing, he thinks he's going to be able to figure this out. But all he sees is a bunch of letters. He walks from his home room back to Mrs. Jeske's room.

"Can you help me?"

"With what Rya'c?" she asks.

"I don't know if this is good or bad," he says, holding the card out to her.

"Well, an 'A' means that you are doing the best that you could be doing in that class. A 'B' is good. A 'C' is ok. A 'D' or 'F' means you're doing poorly."

Rya'c frowns at his paper. "Why was I given this mark of shame?"

Mrs. Jeske takes the paper from him to look at his grades for the first time. "It's math; are you having trouble in math?"

"It is very difficult, but I have worked hard to comprehend it," Rya'c says.

"If you talk to your teacher, they could probably tell you why you aren't doing well. The rest of your grades are really quite good. You have an A in my class."

"If I question the teacher, he may become angry, and give me an even lower grade."

"No, it doesn't work that way. I'll go talk to him with you if you want."

He looks up at her with gratitude in his eyes.

-0-0-0-

"Hi, Henry," Mrs. Jeske says as they enter the room, "Rya'c has a question to ask you."

Rya'c hangs his head in silence.

"He wants to know what he can do to improve his grade," Mrs. Jeske says, seeing that her student isn't going to ask anything.

"He's missing a lot of assignments."

"Rya'c just moved here from Africa. He doesn't understand assignments being posted. I have never seen a student work harder, though. If you could provide him with a list of what he's missing, I'm sure he could get caught up."

"His grades are on the website."

"Computers are really hard for him, could you give us a paper copy?"

The algebra teacher, Mr. Morris, nods, and goes over to his computer. "It's printed in the computer lab, you can pick it up from there."

Rya'c walks forward, "I am sorry my assignments have been of an inadequate quality in the past. I will try to rectify this in the future."

Mr. Harris smiles, "You are a good kid. Algebra is hard, but I am sure you're going to do all right. You've gotten good grades for the last couple of weeks."

-0-0-0-

"I have done you dishonor," Rya'c says as Shelby picks him up from school.

"What?" she asks.

"I have received an unacceptable mark in algebra," he says, holding up his report card.

"Just one?" she asks, looking at the others.

"You have very little faith in my abilities," he says.

"No, I'm sorry. I just mean, you've missed three out of these nine weeks. That means you were gone for 1/3 of it. It would be pretty amazing if you did well this grading term," she says, taking the report card from him. "Rya'c, there are a lot of As here. This is amazing."

"Mrs. Jeske helped me procure a way of improving the unacceptable grade," Rya'c says.

"Maybe we'll have to re-think your graduation. With grades like these, you might be able to actually get the credits that you need by the time you're twenty. That's not bad at all."

**One Month Later**

Daniel has a splitting headache. He earned it by translating all night with the bad lighting so he wouldn't wake up his family.

He reaches into his medicine cabinet to get some pain relief, and is greeted by an empty bottle. He shakes it quickly just to make sure it is well and completely empty. Then he walks into the girl's bathroom, the nearest source of medicine.

He reaches in, and grabs a bottle, but knocks something into the sink the process. He down a pill quickly, before he reaches down to pick up the thing that he dropped. He freezes at the object in his hand.

Birth control pills.

He grasps them in his hand so tight that he crushes the cardboard that contains them. "Janet!" he calls.

She's not in the bedroom. She must have got up early. He wouldn't know, since he'd neglected sleep. He tries the kitchen. Cassie is flipping pancakes by tossing them in the air much to the amusement of her younger siblings.

"Janet, can I speak with you?" he asks.

He's still holding the pills, and Cassie sees them. A pancake flops to the floor. "Dad," she says in horror.

"I need to speak to your mother," he says, with a voice cooler than she's ever heard it before.

Janet follows her husband.

"These are prescription," he says, throwing them toward their wife as soon as they are alone in their bedroom.

Janet remains silent.

"You're her doctor."

Silence.

"They are Cassie's, aren't they? I mean, you're four months pregnant, so they aren't yours. Not that you usually kept your pills in our daughter's bathroom."

Janet just looks at him.

"Our daughter is having sex. You knew, and you didn't discuss it with me?"

"I was trying to protect her."

"Protect her? I'll protect her by kicking the ass of that boyfriend!"

"You mean the boyfriend she's been with for almost a year? The kind and respectful one?"

"Respectful? He's sleeping with my teenage daughter! I don't consider that very respectful! You know what else isn't respectful? The fact that my wife knew about this, and didn't tell me!"

"I tried, but when I heard how against pre-marital sex you were…" she begins.

"That's all the more reason to tell me about it! I could have talked her out of it!"

"I only found out about it after the fact."

"Well, I could have talked her out of doing it again!"

There is a knock at the bedroom door. Janet walks over to answer it, and sees a very nervous-looking teenager standing there. Cassie tucks some hair behind her ear. "The kids have their breakfast, and I just thought… we'll, you're talking about me, so I should be here."

They stand their silently for a minute.

"You're grounded, and I'm taking your pills," Daniel says.

"Oh, no, you're not," Janet argues, "She needs those."

"She won't need them, because she's not having sex anymore."

"Daniel," Janet protests.

"No, we're not discussing this. She has lost my trust, and she's not leaving the house or having a boy over until she's gained it back."

"She's my daughter too, and she's not being punished for being a normal teenager," Janet says firmly.

"Normal? You think that children having sex is normal? I just… I can't do this," he says, walking past them. The two women stare at each other as he pushes past them into the hallway. They listen as he walks out of the house.

"Did he just… leave?" Cassie asks.

Janet doesn't answer, because she's terrified of what her answer would have to be.

"He left us because of me."

"I'm sure that he's going to come back," Janet assures her daughter, even though she isn't actually that sure.

The two women return to the kitchen, hoping they don't look too shaken.

"Where did Daniel go? He said he was going to take me to the library today," Olivia says.

"He went to work," Janet says quickly.

"Is the world going to end?" Olivia asks seriously.

"Everything is fine, it's not an emergency. He's just doing some research," Janet says.

"I'll take you to the library," Cassie offers.

"It's not the same, because you don't know the librarian. You won't get her to let me into the rare book room."

"Sara has let you in before, she'll do it again," Cassie says, smiling at her little sister. Cassie knows that it's her fault that Daniel isn't there to take her sister to the library. She's going to do anything she can to make up for it.

-0-0-0-

Daniel wakes up on the couch in his office, feeling his headache has abated. He remembers his broken promise to his younger daughter, and feels awful.

He remembers the things he said to his older daughter, and feels even worse.

He decides that he'll deal with all of that after a shower, and some breakfast. He also decides that he's a bit too old to get away with an all-nighter anymore.

-0-0-0-

The house is silent when he comes back. He walks through the house, looking in room after room. He finds his son first, sleeping in his crib. It is naptime, he remembers. His wife is lying in the bed. He debates waking her up, but this pregnancy has not been any easier on his wife than her first, so he doesn't want to wake her up.

He's about to walk out of the room when she says his name.

He sits down on the edge of the bed, and swipes some hair out of her eyes, "Sorry."

"You left," she says.

"I stayed up all night working on a translation like an idiot. I had to get some sleep so I wouldn't be such a bear."

"I thought you left," she says almost the same words again. Now he understands what she means.

He crawls into bed behind his wife, and wraps an arm around her growing stomach. "I'm never going to leave you. Especially not over a fight. Where are the girls?"

"Cassie took Livvy to the library," she says.

"I'm sorry. I was supposed to do that. I'm not going to be staying up all night doing a translation ever again, it's not very responsible parenting."

His wife snuggles against him, "I should have told you."

"You made a tough call. It is better she confides in one of us than in neither."

"What are we going to do with her now?" Janet asks softly.

"I'm going to tell her why I don't want her to have sex. Then I'm going to give her pills back, and treat her like an adult. She's a junior in high school. Two years from now, she'll be making all of her own decisions; she might as well start making some of her decisions now."

She sighs contently.

"Go back to sleep," he whispers gently. She grabs his hand, and he settles in next to his wife to sleep.

-0-0-0-

Daniel wakes up at the sound of the front door opening. He untangles himself from his wife, and goes out to meet his daughters.

"I'm sorry I didn't take you today," he says to Olivia.

"That's ok. Cassie makes the librarian talk about different things than you. When she's around you, she talks about old books. But when she's around Cassie she talks about the policeman she's dating, Pete."*

"Well, I'm glad that you guys had a good day. I'd like to talk to Cassie for a bit."

"Ok," Olivia says taking her bag of books to her bedroom.

"I think we'll need the privacy of your room," he says to his older daughter.

When they enter Cassie's bedroom, they both sit on the bed. Daniel has the uncomfortable thought of what this bed might have been used for, he gets up and moves to the desk chair.

"I'm sorry about before. I was overtired because I stayed up all night."

"Please don't leave mom because of me. It wasn't her fault," Cassie breaks in.

"I'm not going anywhere. Ever. Sweetie, you could do a lot worse than this, and I still wouldn't leave. I just went to work to sleep on my couch at work for a couple of hours. I'm not even going to punish you. I'd rather you did this honestly than dishonestly. So you can have these back," he says, pushing the cardboard pill container, which is worse for the wear, back to her. "But I do want to talk to you about why I don't think you should be having sex."

Cassie nods her head, and looks anywhere in the room besides her father's face.

"I'm not going to give you any line about how virginity is a precious gift. Mostly because it's crap."

Cassie giggles at the unexpected comment.

"I'm not even going to do much talking about the risks involved. I think you are smart enough to know what they are. Just know that no matter how much protection that you use, there is still a risk. Honey, someday, you're going to be getting married, and I don't want you to have to squirm when you and your husband start talking about how many partners you've had. Every time you have sex, the person takes a little bit of your heart, and you give them a little bit of yours. If it does fall apart, like most relationships do, then it's going to hurt more because you were having sex."

"But it's Dominic," she protests.

"I know that, but do you really think you're going to marry him?" Daniel asks. Suddenly he finds himself really wishing that he hadn't asked that question. His daughter might say yes. Considering the fact she's been dating him for a year, and that in her culture she'd be married by now, he might believe her.

"We're way too young to even think about that."

Daniel breathes a sigh of relief.

"Just because it all crashes and burns doesn't mean it was wrong. It doesn't have to end well to be good. Sometimes, the in-between is worth the pain. Even if I end up hating Dominic, it doesn't mean I'm going to be sorry we dated, or had sex, or were in love."

Daniel is temporarily stunned by the wisdom of his daughter's words, he taps her on the knee, "Ok, well I had to put my two cents in."

"Daniel… what you said about talking to my husband about… multiple partners, that was really about Mom, wasn't it."

"And that's where the line is," Daniel says, starting to stand up.

"Not fair. I didn't want to take about me and Dominic just as much as you don't want to talk about Mom and you," he says.

"I have trouble believing that is true," he says carefully.

"I just want to know if you love her less," the girl asks sadly.

"No," he says honestly, and then even more honestly, he adds, "But sometimes I do wish there had been… fewer. Not that there were a whole lot. I don't want you to think badly of your mom," he stammers.

"I am a little scared that someday someone's going to think less of me because of this," Cassie says softly.

He suddenly feels protective of his daughter, "Well, if that ever happens, you just tell me his name, and I'll beat him up. Awkward conversation done?"

She nods.

"I love you, Cass," he says as he leaves the room.

***Yep, the woman that would have been Jack's wife, and the man that would have been Sam's fiancé are together. **


	84. Part 7 Chapter 8

**Two Weeks Later**

**Spoilers for Cure**

Teal'c takes a small vial, and puts it in his wife's hand, "This may be important for the life of our children," he tells her.

"Ok, what is it?" she says carefully.

"We traveled to a planet which was populated by a group of people who made a medicine from the offspring of the Tok'ra queen. The Tok'ra are trying to reproduce it, and this is the sample for the people of Earth."

"Ok, first off, I'm a nurse, not a chemist, so I'm probably not the best one to work with this. Second of all, I don't have any idea what this has to do with my babies."

"You are the most intelligent women that I know. This medicine could solve their immunity problems."

Shelby hands the vial back to him, and says, "I thought that shots and antibiotics were going to solve that."

"It is only a theory. I have worried much about their immunity."

"You should talk to your wife when you're worried about your children," she says.

"I am used to bearing my worry alone," he confesses quietly.

"You didn't share a lot with Dray'auc?" Shelby asks, speaking about his ex-wife for the first time since her death.

"My worries used to pertain to the contrast between my actions and my beliefs while serving the Goa'ul."

"Do you still worry about that?"

"My job no longer causes a discrepancy between what I want to do and what I am required to do."

"And if it did?"

"I would tell you."

She takes one of her hands, and puts it on her stomach, resting both of her hands on top of it. "You feel them?"

He nods his head.

"We'll figure it out. Our kids are going to be fine."

"I will take this vial to the appropriate scientist," he says.

**Two Weeks Later**

"Welcome to our gingerbread party," Emma says with a huge grin on her face as the Jackson children come through the door.

"Candy!" Will exclaims, running toward the table with glee.

"Stop!" Ty shouts in horror catching the child in mid-run, and swinging him around. "You have to construct a house before you can decorate it."

"Candy?" the little boy says mournfully, staring at the table full of forbidden treasures.

"I think making a gingerbread house is a little beyond his motor skills. Let's just get him a little candy, and let him eat with the adults," Janet says helpfully.

"Now the table will be unbalanced," Ty complains.

"I think you forgot to count the biggest kid of all," Sam says, pointing to her husband.

"Dad, will you make a gingerbread house with us?" the kid asks hopefully.

"You betcha," he says.

Shelby and Teal'c arrive with their three children a few minutes later.

"Can I show you to your table?" Emma asks.

"I do not want to take part in the construction of a gingerbread house," Rya'c says gravely.

"Unbalanced tables!" Ty moans.

"Oh, that's ok, I'd really rather sit this one out anyway," Cassie says, "Maybe Rya'c and I can go hang out downstairs."

"Not by yourselves," Daniel says.

"Seriously, dad, we don't need to be supervised, we're teenagers." Daniel raises his eyebrows in a way that makes his daughter groan. "Teenagers who are dating other people."

"Door open," he says.

Cassie glares at him, and then the teenagers go off together.

"What were you endeavoring to prevent?" Teal'c asks Jack, confused.

"Something that wouldn't happen unless Dominic was here," Janet says.

Daniel flushes red.

"I am still uncertain what is happening," Teal'c says.

"Shh," Shelby warns.

"If there are things which I should be guarding my son against, I want to be aware of it," Teal'c objects.

"We'll talk about this at home," Shelby says, and by now all the adults are blushing.

The younger kids by now are now frosting their gingerbread houses together while shoving candy into their mouths. Will is just shoving candy into his mouth.

"Jack, your table awaits," Sam says, pointing to one of the empty spots at the kid table.

"I hope the adult beverage your table gets to enjoy still makes its way to me," he grumbles as he sits down with the children, to his secret delight.

"Wow, Livvy, you've done a great job with getting your house to stand straight, can you help me?" Ty says.

"Sure, you just hold it like this," she says, putting her hands on his walls to get them straight. Ty puts his hands around the girl's to get a feel for it.

Olivia's heart stops as she stares at the boy with wide-eyed emotion.

"You smell nice," she says, turning toward him.

"I used Emma's princess shampoo," he replies.

"Well, it's good," Olivia says.

"Thanks for fixing my house," Ty says, pulling his hands away and sitting back in his chair.

"Any time," Olivia says dreamily.

"Can you fix mine, too?" Hannah asks hopefully, referring to the sliding tent the young girl has constructed. It's about 80% frosting and 20% gingerbread, and the cookie just can't support the weight.

Olivia scrapes some frosting off the roof, and grabs some more gingerbread in an attempt to create something with structural integrity.

"I smell nice, too, right? I used Sissy's shampoo, too!" the child says cheerfully.

"Right, you smell great," Olivia says, but something in the tone causes Jack to look up, slightly alarmed. It was just so different than the tone she used when she told that to his son.

As soon as Hannah's house is vertical, Olivia returns to her seat and becomes completely absorbed in the construction of her own private winter wonderland.

"Eggnog," Sam says, handing her husband a drink before returning to the adult table. "I've got chocolate milk for the incubators in the group," she adds, handing it to the other women.

"We're going to need some sugar with this as well, if everyone else is getting high off sugar or alcohol. You're going to have to get some candy over here."

Hannah's house falls down, and she raises her two fists to slam into it, scattering candy across the floor.

"From now on, you've got to be eight or older to make gingerbread houses," Sam says, running over to remove her daughter from the table and wash the frosting off her arm.

"Let's see how the rest of the day goes before we plan a 'from now on'," Janet says, looking suspiciously at the scene in front of her.

"It said 'first annual gingerbread extravaganza' on the invitation," Olivia points out.

Janet shakes her head, and passes some of her son's candy over to Sam's daughter. Schrödinger and Buddy, the O'Neill's dog, scurry across the floor to devour the stray pieces of candy that fell with the crash of Hannah's house.

"Pretty soon you're each going to have a squirming baby on your lap," Daniel says to Teal'c and Shelby.

"You want to practice now?" Sam asks, looking like she's wrestling an octopus.

"Yeah," Shelby says seriously.

"That was a joke. I don't actually expect you to take my kid mid-tantrum," Sam says with a laugh.

"I think I'm going to need the practice," Shelby says nervously.

"You're a great mom," Janet says softly.

"And I'm not going to let you fight with a four-year-old when you're pregnant with twins. There is no reason for you to end up with a back ache," Sam adds.

Then Becky Lynn's house falls down. Teal'c and Shelby both jump up to help her. Teal'c sits back down to build his wife's confidence.

Shelby bends down next to the girl who is almost in tears, "Do you want me to help you build it up again, or do you want to come over to the grown up table?"

"I can do it alone," Becky Lynn says sadly.

"You're sure?" she asks.

The girl nods, and then without asking, Shelby gives her a hug.

"You're going to be fine," Janet says, patting Shelby's hand as she returns.

"Dad!" Cassie's voice objects from the basement.

"Just checking," he says, hopping up the stairs, looking a little guilty.

"And our daughter was…" Janet prompts.

"Sitting and talking to a boy," he admits.

"As I thought," she says, rocking the quickly-calming boy on her lap.

"Hey, if they were doing something bad, you'd all be thanking me for checking on it," he mutters.

"Checking on what?" Teal'c asks.

"Later," Shelby says again.

"What do you say we put on some Grinch for the gingerbread house dropouts?" Sam asks, causing the squirming on her lap to stop.

"Olivia, how did you make those characters?" Ty asks, looking intently at the Santa on her roof.

"I just mushed the candy up, and sculpted it into a shape," she says.

"You're an artist," Ty says in awe.

"You really think so?" Olivia says, melting in a way which sets off alarms in the heads of all the adults that are around her.

"Can you make me a Santa?" Becky Lynn asks hopefully.

"Me too!" Emma pleads.

"I'll try," Olivia says with concentration.

"Hey, Teal'c and Shelby, can I talk to you quick?" Cassie asks, coming out of the room.

"You are a character without honor, you said you would not reveal my secret," Rya'c protests from behind her.

"What?" Shelby asks, terrified, following the girl. Teal'c trails after his wife, and they all shut the door.

"Look, Ry doesn't want me to share this, but this just sounds like the kind of thing you break promises for. He got suspended."

"What?" Teal'c asks.

"He was kicked out of school for a little bit because he did something bad." Shelby translates for her alien husband, "What and how long?" Shelby asks.

"He only got one day. He punched a guy. It sounded like he really deserved it. This guy was picking on that girlfriend of his," Cassie says.

"Is the other boy ok?" Shelby asks with concern.

"Why would this action not be considered honorable in your culture?" Teal'c asks.

"He used violence, Teal'c," Shelby says in shock.

"The other kid is fine… I'll go see how the construction is going," Cassie says, making a hasty exit back to the group.

"What are we going to do?" Shelby asks.

"We are going to give Rya'c the accolades he so richly deserves for fighting injustice," Teal'c says.

"No, we're going to punish his violent behavior," his wife corrects.

"He was behaving as a warrior."

"Which is bad because he's a teenager. Look, I have to work tomorrow so you're going to have to take him. You're going to have to make him do something he really hates. Like read Shakespeare or clean the house. He can't do that again. If he gets in trouble a few more times like this he's going to be kicked out of school. We have to stop this right now."

"Alright," Teal'c says reluctantly. He knows that she knows more about her culture than she does.

"And I'll be giving him the lecture about why what he did was wrong. At some point when you are not in the room to give him winks so he doesn't believe it."

Teal'c walks back into the main room, and sees a Becky Lynn looking confused.

"What is the problem?" he asks.

"I made our family," she says, pointing to the front yard of the gingerbread house where there are two figures formed from tootsie and three formed from bubble gum. "I just didn't know what color to make the babies."

"Well, we won't know for sure until the babies are born. They could be very dark, they could be very light, but they will probably be halfway between."

"Will you help me mix up the pink and brown?" she asks, putting a blob of each into his large hands.

"Certainly," he says with a smile.

-0-0-0-

Thirty minutes later, all the other kids have abandoned houses in various stages of completion. Olivia, however, is still working on her masterpiece with absolute concentration.

Ry'ac returns from his talk with Shelby looking like he didn't believe a word that his step-mom said. He was quiet and respectful, but he didn't buy into anything she said. He just doesn't think she understands. She's not a warrior. She's never been to battle. She thinks fighting is wrong, even though she could have saved her little sister by fighting.

Sometimes it was the right thing to do.

Rya'c sits down next to Tyler on a small couch that they call a love seat. On the television, the small green god his father told him about years ago is returning the gifts that he stole from the noisy children.

"I heard you were taking care of a bully," Ty says quietly.

"I still believe my actions were honorable, but I am willing to take whatever punishment they have decided is just," Rya'c mutters.

"It's ok to beat up the bully, you just can't get caught," Ty whispers.

Rya'c looks at him in surprise.

"You do it when they're not watching. Do it once or twice, and they leave you alone. Then you can fix your hair with gel or use clear nail polish or whatever you want."

"I have no desire to do any of those things."

"Well, you can do whatever you want, then."

Over at the gingerbread table Olivia overhears the conversation, and her heart melts even more for the boy who is stealing her heart.


	85. Part 7 Chapter 9

**The Next Day**

Teal'c and Rya'c are sparring in the basement 'sparring room'.

"Father, do you believe that my actions were without honor?"

"I believe that your actions could result in consequences that would be less than desirable."

"I won't get caught engaging in battle at school again."

Teal'c smiles at the careful wording, "It is good to have many family members to give you advice. Who was most helpful in this recent endeavor?"

"Tyler," Rya'c replies.

"I would not think the child knows much about the ways of an Earth warrior."

"The people here are no more tolerant of boys who act like girls than the people of Chulak. Young Tyler O'Neill has fought more battles than most children his age."

Teal'c considers his son gravely, "I will offer in his defense if he ever needs it."

"I believe that would be beneficial," Rya'c agrees.

-0-0-0-

When Daniel goes to pick Olivia up from school the next day, he notices some new writing on her notebook.

He tilts it toward him, and sees "Olivia O'Neill" written all over it in different scripts.

His eyebrows shoot up, "Ah… so you've got a crush."

"I've decided that Ty and I are going to get married," Olivia says seriously.

"Interesting, considering that usually two adults make the decision to get married. Not one child," he says, pulling out into traffic.

"I'll tell him when he's a bit older. He still thinks that girls have cooties."

"Well, I think you're too young to date."

"I don't want to date him. I don't even like fancy food and flowers," Olivia objects.

Daniel just barely manages to keep his laughter inside. "Well, that's great, but I think you are too young to be writing someone else's last name all over your notebook. There will be plenty of time for boys later."

Olivia considers this for a second, "But Daddy, Anne of Green Gable was a child when she fell for Gilbert."

"No, she was a child when she hated him, and then it turned to love later on."

"So you're saying I should hit Ty with a slate?" Olivia asks with a giggle.

"I am certainly not suggesting that. I'm just saying you should wait until you're old enough for boys."

"But Ty is really cool, isn't he, Daddy?"

Daniel's stomach churns; he's pretty sure that his daughter is going to get her heart broken. He thinks there is a good chance that Ty might never be interested in having a girlfriend. Even if Ty isn't gay, by the time Ty is old enough to look at girls, his daughter will have no doubt have moved on to some other boy he'll have to worry about.

"Livy-Lou, I'm just not sure that he is the best person for you," Daniel says sadly.

"Ty? Are you kidding? Have you seen him play hockey?"

"Well, there is more to life than hockey, dear one."

"He's also really smart. He won an award for reading a hundred books, and he was the first one to get it."

"I'm not saying that Ty isn't a good kid. He is. He just might be… a little too much like a brother for you."

"We're not related," Olivia protests.

"The children of SG-1 have always called each other cousins," Daniel objects, feeling that he doesn't have a right to bring up the real reason he thinks that Ty would never take an interest in Olivia. He's pretty sure that the flower boy at his wedding is gay.

Olivia smiles, "The more you tell me it's a bad idea, the more I like the idea. It's like Shakespeare or Austin."

"Austin? You've read Jane Austin?" Daniel asks.

"Yeah, I don't like her as well as Alcott, but Alcott never wrote about people who weren't supposed to fall in love. And if she did, they wouldn't have fallen in love, because they were very obedient to their parents or legal guardians."

"Then I say more Alcott and less Austin," Daniel says, allowing himself the smile that he was hiding the whole conversation.

"I like to read everything," she says, proving her point by pulling some Poe out of her backpack, and losing herself in the House of Usher.

"I think you are a bit young for that book as well."

"You think I'm too young for all the good things in life," Olivia says with a sigh.

"I think you don't realize how many wonderful things you are the right age for and I am too old for."

**A Week Later**

There have never been dolls in the Jackson house. Cassie's culture didn't have them, and when she'd arrived she was almost too old for it. Olivia used to play with dolls with her mother, but she hadn't touched them since her mother died.

But Daniel decided that he had to teach his daughter how to play, and he would do that with a doll. But he doesn't just use any doll. He gets an American Girl doll.

Olivia smiles as she opens it but Daniel can see she's disappointed.

"She comes with a book, you know."

"It's a book for children. You could have used the money for this doll to get me thousand of books at a used-book store."

"But you needed this," he says, sitting down next to her. "Her name is Samantha, and she's from the Edwardian period, although her clothes are actually more Victorian."

"So she's not even historically accurate," Olivia grumbles.

"No, but she is fun," Daniel says helpfully.

Olivia rolls her eyes.

Daniel sits down on the floor in front of her, "My parents died when I was eight, Olivia. I didn't really play after that. I studied, and I read. I loved it, but I regret it now. I've spent my entire adult life studying and reading. I really wish I had spent a little bit of time playing with Lego or baseball or… doing something that kids should do."

"And since it's too late for you, you're going to save me from the same fate?"

"I was kind of hoping that you would save me," he says, pulling the doll out of the package.

"These aren't exactly Lego."

"They'll do," he says, holding up the doll in front of her and saying, "Hi, Olivia," in a really high voice.

She laughs, "I'm pretty sure that's not how you're supposed to play with dolls."

"Ok, show me how," he says, handing the doll to her.

"I don't know how to play with a doll, either."

"Well, we'll figure it out together," he says.

-0-0-0-

"I do not understand why warriors do not stop this 'Santa' from breaking into your houses at night," Rya'c says, looking at the presents under the tree.

"He leaves us presents; why would we want to stop him from doing that?" Becky asks from inside her mound of presents.

"It seems like it is a serious security breath," Rya'c says.

Shelby uses her eyes to communicate to her husband that it will be his job to inform his son that Santa Claus is not real at some point when the girls are not listening. Teal'c has been in America long enough now that he is able to understand the facial expressions and the intent behind them.

The younger girls are ripping through presents by now.

Teal'c helps Rya'c get the idea, but the teenager is less enthusiastic about his gifts. He comes from a culture where material possessions are not highly valued.

Shelby, and Teal'c start to open their presents only after the girls have covered the floor with wrapping paper, and are reading new books and playing new games.

When there presents are done, there is one left. Teal'c hands it to his wife.

"What is this?" she asks, looking at the tag.

"To the twins. From Daddy."

She can feel tears filling her eyes, and she knows that this is only partly because of her hormones.

"This is so sweet."

"You have yet to open it," he reminds her.

She opens it up to see two small baby outfits. She rubs her stomach. "Thank you; the babies love it."

He takes the outfits out and places them across her growing stomach.

"I think you got it backwards. The boy is on the right and the girl is on the left. At least, that's the way they were at the last ultrasound," she says.

He switches the outfits, and she grabs him by his shoulder to pull him down for a kiss.

The doorbell rings. "Amy has come for the exchange of our presents," Rya'c says.

"Leave the door open," Teal'c warns him. Shelby did have that discussion with him about why Daniel didn't want his daughter alone in a room. Now Teal'c is terrified that all American teenagers are having sex all the time.

Even though the thought is nowhere near either of the teenagers' minds.

"Yes, father," Rya'c says, going to get the door. Amy and Rya'c walk into his bedroom, and he takes a box from the dresser. "I was not aware that I was supposed to wrap Christmas presents until this morning. I am sorry for this oversight."

"It's ok, I don't believe in everyone having to do cultural experiences exactly the same way." She opens it to reveal a huge set of fancy art pencils. Some are colored, some are just different hardness or thickness. "Thank you; I love it," she says seriously. She hands over a thin box to him, "Mine is kind of dumb."

He opens it up to reveal a complete copy of her most recent comic book, "I get to see how it ends?"

"Oh, it's not an ending. We are so far from the ending," she says, with a meaningful look in her eyes.

"I shall read this and have it back to you before the start of school."

"You don't have to get it back to me. It's a present; you get to keep it."

"You put so much work into this, I could not keep it forever," he objects.

"I made you a copy. Besides, it is your story as much as it is mine," he says.

Shelby walks into the room, "Sorry, it was either your dad or I popping in, and I thought you might prefer me. I'll be out of your way for five minutes now."

"You know we can go sit in the living room," Amy says.

"That will just encourage their behavior," he says.

"They are your parents. You have respect them."

"She isn't my parent. And he left my mom when I was a kid. Just because he decided to be a dad again doesn't mean that he really is."

"He's your dad, and he's acting like this because he wants to protect you."

"He doesn't need to protect me from you."

"No, he doesn't, but it's actually kind of sweet that he wants to."

He takes her by the hand, and they stand up together and walk into the living room.

"Your sisters are adorable," Amy comments.

"They aren't my sisters. They are my step-mother's sisters."

"Your father and step-mother are their legal guardians, and they are your legal guardians;you're their brother."

"See, I told you that you are my big brother," Becky Lynn says, looking up at the kid with admiration in her face. "I can't get the dolly out of the box. Do your fingers twist good?"

"Indeed," Rya'c says, taking it from her.


	86. Part 7 chapter 10

**The Next Day**

Teal'c and Rya'c are sparring in the basement 'sparring room'.

"Father, do you believe that my actions were without honor?"

"I believe that your actions could result in consequences that would be less than desirable."

"I won't get caught engaging in battle at school again."

Teal'c smiles at the careful wording, "It is good to have many family members to give you advice. Who was most helpful in this recent endeavor?"

"Tyler," Rya'c replies.

"I would not think the child knows much about the ways of an Earth warrior."

"The people here are no more tolerant of boys who act like girls than the people of Chulak. Young Tyler O'Neill has fought more battles than most children his age."

Teal'c considers his son gravely, "I will offer in his defense if he ever needs it."

"I believe that would be beneficial," Rya'c agrees.

-0-0-0-

When Daniel goes to pick Olivia up from school the next day, he notices some new writing on her notebook.

He tilts it toward him, and sees "Olivia O'Neill" written all over it in different scripts.

His eyebrows shoot up, "Ah… so you've got a crush."

"I've decided that Ty and I are going to get married," Olivia says seriously.

"Interesting, considering that usually two adults make the decision to get married. Not one child," he says, pulling out into traffic.

"I'll tell him when he's a bit older. He still thinks that girls have cooties."

"Well, I think you're too young to date."

"I don't want to date him. I don't even like fancy food and flowers," Olivia objects.

Daniel just barely manages to keep his laughter inside. "Well, that's great, but I think you are too young to be writing someone else's last name all over your notebook. There will be plenty of time for boys later."

Olivia considers this for a second, "But Daddy, Anne of Green Gable was a child when she fell for Gilbert."

"No, she was a child when she hated him, and then it turned to love later on."

"So you're saying I should hit Ty with a slate?" Olivia asks with a giggle.

"I am certainly not suggesting that. I'm just saying you should wait until you're old enough for boys."

"But Ty is really cool, isn't he, Daddy?"

Daniel's stomach churns; he's pretty sure that his daughter is going to get her heart broken. He thinks there is a good chance that Ty might never be interested in having a girlfriend. Even if Ty isn't gay, by the time Ty is old enough to look at girls, his daughter will have no doubt have moved on to some other boy he'll have to worry about.

"Livy-Lou, I'm just not sure that he is the best person for you," Daniel says sadly.

"Ty? Are you kidding? Have you seen him play hockey?"

"Well, there is more to life than hockey, dear one."

"He's also really smart. He won an award for reading a hundred books, and he was the first one to get it."

"I'm not saying that Ty isn't a good kid. He is. He just might be… a little too much like a brother for you."

"We're not related," Olivia protests.

"The children of SG-1 have always called each other cousins," Daniel objects, feeling that he doesn't have a right to bring up the real reason he thinks that Ty would never take an interest in Olivia. He's pretty sure that the flower boy at his wedding is gay.

Olivia smiles, "The more you tell me it's a bad idea, the more I like the idea. It's like Shakespeare or Austin."

"Austin? You've read Jane Austin?" Daniel asks.

"Yeah, I don't like her as well as Alcott, but Alcott never wrote about people who weren't supposed to fall in love. And if she did, they wouldn't have fallen in love, because they were very obedient to their parents or legal guardians."

"Then I say more Alcott and less Austin," Daniel says, allowing himself the smile that he was hiding the whole conversation.

"I like to read everything," she says, proving her point by pulling some Poe out of her backpack, and losing herself in the House of Usher.

"I think you are a bit young for that book as well."

"You think I'm too young for all the good things in life," Olivia says with a sigh.

"I think you don't realize how many wonderful things you are the right age for and I am too old for."

**A Week Later**

There have never been dolls in the Jackson house. Cassie's culture didn't have them, and when she'd arrived she was almost too old for it. Olivia used to play with dolls with her mother, but she hadn't touched them since her mother died.

But Daniel decided that he had to teach his daughter how to play, and he would do that with a doll. But he doesn't just use any doll. He gets an American Girl doll.

Olivia smiles as she opens it but Daniel can see she's disappointed.

"She comes with a book, you know."

"It's a book for children. You could have used the money for this doll to get me thousand of books at a used-book store."

"But you needed this," he says, sitting down next to her. "Her name is Samantha, and she's from the Edwardian period, although her clothes are actually more Victorian."

"So she's not even historically accurate," Olivia grumbles.

"No, but she is fun," Daniel says helpfully.

Olivia rolls her eyes.

Daniel sits down on the floor in front of her, "My parents died when I was eight, Olivia. I didn't really play after that. I studied, and I read. I loved it, but I regret it now. I've spent my entire adult life studying and reading. I really wish I had spent a little bit of time playing with Lego or baseball or… doing something that kids should do."

"And since it's too late for you, you're going to save me from the same fate?"

"I was kind of hoping that you would save me," he says, pulling the doll out of the package.

"These aren't exactly Lego."

"They'll do," he says, holding up the doll in front of her and saying, "Hi, Olivia," in a really high voice.

She laughs, "I'm pretty sure that's not how you're supposed to play with dolls."

"Ok, show me how," he says, handing the doll to her.

"I don't know how to play with a doll, either."

"Well, we'll figure it out together," he says.

-0-0-0-

"I do not understand why warriors do not stop this 'Santa' from breaking into your houses at night," Rya'c says, looking at the presents under the tree.

"He leaves us presents; why would we want to stop him from doing that?" Becky asks from inside her mound of presents.

"It seems like it is a serious security breath," Rya'c says.

Shelby uses her eyes to communicate to her husband that it will be his job to inform his son that Santa Claus is not real at some point when the girls are not listening. Teal'c has been in America long enough now that he is able to understand the facial expressions and the intent behind them.

The younger girls are ripping through presents by now.

Teal'c helps Rya'c get the idea, but the teenager is less enthusiastic about his gifts. He comes from a culture where material possessions are not highly valued.

Shelby, and Teal'c start to open their presents only after the girls have covered the floor with wrapping paper, and are reading new books and playing new games.

When there presents are done, there is one left. Teal'c hands it to his wife.

"What is this?" she asks, looking at the tag.

"To the twins. From Daddy."

She can feel tears filling her eyes, and she knows that this is only partly because of her hormones.

"This is so sweet."

"You have yet to open it," he reminds her.

She opens it up to see two small baby outfits. She rubs her stomach. "Thank you; the babies love it."

He takes the outfits out and places them across her growing stomach.

"I think you got it backwards. The boy is on the right and the girl is on the left. At least, that's the way they were at the last ultrasound," she says.

He switches the outfits, and she grabs him by his shoulder to pull him down for a kiss.

The doorbell rings. "Amy has come for the exchange of our presents," Rya'c says.

"Leave the door open," Teal'c warns him. Shelby did have that discussion with him about why Daniel didn't want his daughter alone in a room. Now Teal'c is terrified that all American teenagers are having sex all the time.

Even though the thought is nowhere near either of the teenagers' minds.

"Yes, father," Rya'c says, going to get the door. Amy and Rya'c walk into his bedroom, and he takes a box from the dresser. "I was not aware that I was supposed to wrap Christmas presents until this morning. I am sorry for this oversight."

"It's ok, I don't believe in everyone having to do cultural experiences exactly the same way." She opens it to reveal a huge set of fancy art pencils. Some are colored, some are just different hardness or thickness. "Thank you; I love it," she says seriously. She hands over a thin box to him, "Mine is kind of dumb."

He opens it up to reveal a complete copy of her most recent comic book, "I get to see how it ends?"

"Oh, it's not an ending. We are so far from the ending," she says, with a meaningful look in her eyes.

"I shall read this and have it back to you before the start of school."

"You don't have to get it back to me. It's a present; you get to keep it."

"You put so much work into this, I could not keep it forever," he objects.

"I made you a copy. Besides, it is your story as much as it is mine," he says.

Shelby walks into the room, "Sorry, it was either your dad or I popping in, and I thought you might prefer me. I'll be out of your way for five minutes now."

"You know we can go sit in the living room," Amy says.

"That will just encourage their behavior," he says.

"They are your parents. You have respect them."

"She isn't my parent. And he left my mom when I was a kid. Just because he decided to be a dad again doesn't mean that he really is."

"He's your dad, and he's acting like this because he wants to protect you."

"He doesn't need to protect me from you."

"No, he doesn't, but it's actually kind of sweet that he wants to."

He takes her by the hand, and they stand up together and walk into the living room.

"Your sisters are adorable," Amy comments.

"They aren't my sisters. They are my step-mother's sisters."

"Your father and step-mother are their legal guardians, and they are your legal guardians;you're their brother."

"See, I told you that you are my big brother," Becky Lynn says, looking up at the kid with admiration in her face. "I can't get the dolly out of the box. Do your fingers twist good?"

"Indeed," Rya'c says, taking it from her.


	87. Part 7 Chapter 11

Emma doesn't believe in Santa Claus anymore. Actually, there are a lot of things she doesn't believe in. Her father's death didn't seem to have a huge effect on her when she was tiny, but now, at nine, it had made her a whole lot more jaded than her peers.

She saunters out of her bedroom after Ty and Hannah are in bed, and offers to eat the cookies that they left for Santa. Jacob, the O'Neill's resident Santa pretender, sees no reason to object. Olivia gives advice on how to answer the letters that her siblings left behind in ways just quirky enough to believe. She laughed for five minutes when the idea to answer the question "How old are you?" with an infinity sign occurred to her.

Then she got the idea to sprinkle bits of ash around the fireplace where Santa would have been.

And then came the Santa butt print, and Jacob was a little bit worried her laughter was going to wake up the younger children.

Then she stops laughing and stares at the soot.

"What's wrong?"

"He's never going to die," Emma whispers.

"Santa? No, ideas live forever," Jacob says joyfully.

"People have graves. They return to the ground. Ashes to ashes, like the old saying goes. They become nutrients for trees, and flowers. They cycle around in the universe, again and again. He's never going to get that."

Jacob realizes with horror that she's talking about her father.

"It's only been a couple of seconds for him, Em," he says softly.

"That's all he'll ever get. A couple of seconds."

Jacob shifts on his feet, suddenly wishing he took the optional psychology class at the academy. He'd done something involving weapons instead. "You want us to give him a memorial?"

Emma shakes her head, "I just don't like the idea of never-ending limbo. He's not dead. Yet, he is beyond hope."

Jacob remembers how hard it was for him to move on after his wife died. He tries to imagine how much harder it would have been for him if his wife had never actually died. If she was still alive. Still in a life-threatening position. Still screaming for help.

But there was nothing they could do.

"I'm sorry, Em," he says sincerely.

"I think I'll go to bed now," Emma mutters.

Jacob gives her a hug that is a bit tighter and a bit longer than was strictly necessary.

As soon as Emma climbs into bed, Hannah's eyes pop open. "Did you see him?"

Emma nods into the darkness.

"What does Santa look like?" Hannah asks.

"Terrible," Emma says, rolling away.

Hannah doesn't know quite what to do with that odd comment. After a few minutes of reflection, she retorts, "Maybe next year you won't be so naughty then!"

Emma rolls over and curls her legs up around herself, because the thought that what her father is going through is her fault is too much for her to bear. Even though she doesn't really believe it.

**A Week Later**

Most of the time for date night, Daniel and Janet just wait until the kids fall asleep and drink some pregnancy-friendly orange juice fortified with extra calcium on the couch.

Lately, though, that hasn't been much of an option. Cassie's seventeen, and goes to bed later than they do. They'd like to scold her, but she keeps up good grades, and seems totally functional going to bed a bit after midnight and waking up at six in the morning.

Daniel and Janet are old enough that ten is late.

Often, at ten, Dominic is still over, and nothing says romance killer quite like watching your teenage daughter hold hands with a kid you know she's intimate with.

So, when Jack offers to watch their kids for a night out, they do not object. He brings his hoard over, and the three O'Neill kids all invade Olivia's room.

"Wow, you have Samantha?" Ty asks in awe.

"Mom?" Hannah asks, confused.

"No, this doll, it's Samantha. You know, one of the American dolls," Ty says, looking at his sister like she's a dimwit.

"Let's go outside and play ball or something," Hannah says, making a face.

"When did you get her?" Ty asks.

"Dad gave it to me for Christmas. It's supposed to be a fountain of youth," she says.

The other kids stare at her, "He thinks that owning a doll will keep me young forever or something."

"Have you even played with her?" Ty asks.

"It," Emma corrects, worried about his grasp on reality.

"Can we play with her?" he asks excitedly. Then he frowns, "Or maybe you want to keep her perfect."

"Knock yourself out," she says, sitting down on the bed. She was more than a little curious what he would do with it.

Emma looks around the room for another doll, and failing that, she grabs a hairbrush from the dresser. She fashions a couple of pony tails to it, and moves near Ty saying, "I say, top of the day to you, good sir."

"Samantha isn't British," Ty says with a roll of her eyes.

Emma looks a bit taken aback by this. The clothing seems to scream another place, as well as another time, but then she says, "Of course not, but the hairbrush is."

Ty nods his head as if that was obvious.

"I'm going downtown to see if I can see one of those new horseless carriages," Ty informs the hairbrush.

"I say, old man, what do you mean?" the hairbrush asks.

"Cars," Ty asks in a way that is clearly breaking character. He then returns to Samantha's voice, and says, "It is the newest technology. It's positively delightful."

Olivia looks around her bedroom for something hairbrush-like enough to allow her entrance into the game. That level of improvisation is a bit much for her so she timidly asks, "Can I play, too?"

"Of course," Ty says, grabbing up a pillow and tosses it to her. "You can be Nelly. She's an orphan, just like Samantha, only she's Irish, and really poor. She has to work in a factory."

Olivia looks at her pillow, and scrunches up her face with concentration, "Top of the morning to ye, off to da horseless carriage we go."

"You guys are nuts," Hannah dismisses them with a wave of her hands as she leaves the room.

-0-0-0-

Daniel silently pokes his head in the room. He is shocked to find her giggling on the floor while doing a simply horrid Irish accent and shaking a pillow.

And Ty? Ty is talking through her doll.

He blinks in shock. His daughter is playing dolls?

"You're home," Olivia says with a smile.

"I don't want to go home," Ty whines.

"Well, it's late bud. Hannah is already asleep, and your dad is trying to get her into the car without waking her. You guys better get going," Daniel says.

"Next time, you should bring Samantha over to our house. We've got lots of other dolls that she could play with," Ty informs Olivia.

To Daniel's shock and delight his daughter nods her head, almost like that was already something she was planning.

"So, you were playing dolls," he says, trying to hide the 'I told you so' look from his face.

Olivia rolls her eyes. "Ty thought Samantha was cool," she explains.

"Well of course he did, because she is cool. Were you having fun?" he asks.

"I don't know," she says with a shrug. "I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I mean, playing dolls is really just making up a story. It's kind of like reading a book, except in reverse."

"More like writing one?" Daniel suggests.

"Right, but there is also some acting to it. It was fun," she confesses.

Daniels grin starts to grow again.

"You not take success well," she says.

"Probably because I've had so little of it."

"Not true," she says, standing up on her tip-toes to give her father a kiss on his cheek. Daniel is glad that she gets to be a little girl, at least for a little bit longer.

**4 Months Later**

By the time the pain is bad enough for Shelby to open her eyes, she's pretty sure that she's been in labor for a while.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Teal'c wasn't supposed to be on a mission when the twins made their debut in the world.

Twins tend to come early, that's a well-known fact. So well-known that Teal'c had refused any missions for the past couple of weeks. Then, there had been some sort of minor Jaffa emergency, and Bray'tac had come through himself to beg help from his protégée. It wasn't like Shelby begrudged him whatever he wanted; he'd practically raised her husband, and then her step-son, for several years. It was only one night, and they'd decided they could risk it. After all, what were the chances that she'd go into labor on the one day her husband was off world?

Apparently, pretty good.

She grabs her phone and makes a call to the O'Neill's. Jack, of course, is gone, along with the rest of SG-1. But Sam is there, and so is her dad. So Sam can come to take care of Shelby's kids without having to take her own along.

She considers waiting for Sam to arrive before leaving, but a contraction causes her to do this as soon as she can. She's still ok to drive now, and later she might have to wait for taxi. If she is as far along as she feels like she is, she might even have to give birth in a taxi. That's not exactly something that she's hoping for, so she walks into Rya'c's room.

He's done with his mediation for the night, its past two in the morning. Even his most fitful Kel-no-reem only takes him from 10 pm to 1 am. He has an algebra book spread before him, and earphones in his ear.

Amy introduced him to heavy metal.

Shortly after, Teal'c gave his son earphones.

Shelby taps his shoulder. He takes off the earphones, looking at little concerned as to why his step-mother might be contacting him in the middle of the night.

"The babies are coming," she tells him.

A look of panic cross the teenager's face as he wonders just exactly how involved teenagers of Earth are with the birthing process.

"I need you to watch the girls until Sam comes."

"Jaffa males do not do childcare," he informs her.

"Sam should be here in, like, ten minutes or something, and they're asleep. I just want you to be in charge."

Rya'c is about to launch one of his more disrespectful objections when Shelby's face doubles over in pain.

"You can rely on me," he tells her.

"Thank-you," she whispers when the contraction is complete.

-0-0-0-

Shelby went to Cheyenne Mountain to have the babies. No-one could be completely sure exactly how much of a security breach the children were going to represent, so it was really the only option.

She had requested that the guard at the front gate contact General Hammond, and have him recall her husband.

She was still expecting to bring his children into the world without him. So she was pleasantly surprised when he ran into the infirmary only twenty minutes after her own arrival.

"Have I missed the birth?" he asks eagerly, coming to his wife's side.

"No," she says, rubbing her hand over her still large and very taut stomach. One of the babies kicks inside of her, and she realizes with a bit of sadness that this is probably going to be one of the last times that she will feel them move within her.

"I am sorry that you had to endure the early parts of your labor without my presence," he says.

"That's ok, it hasn't been so bad yet," she tells him.

He smiles at her, thinking, not for the first time, that his wife is a lot more of a warrior than she would like to admit. This is the kind of pain that most women found in unendurable. Shelby, though, she had felt worse. This was nothing compared the pain caused by some of the beatings in her childhood.

"I am required to hold your hand," he says, taking her small hand from the bedside in his huge one.

"You're not required to do anything," Shelby tells him. She finds herself more than a little relieved when he keeps holding her hand anyway.

-0-0-0-

The boy is born first. Teal'c takes him into his hands the second he has entered the world, and says, "Welcome, Luke," with a huge grin on his face.

Shelby is shocked, because she's only caught wisps and hints of smiles before, and this is so much more than that.

The sight of her husband so indescribably happy makes the birth of her daughter much more endurable.

"Welcome, Leia," he says as his daughter enters the world.

"No, I vetoed that name," she says, with no small amount of panic.

"I thought you said that in jest. It is clearly the most appropriate name for our daughter."

"Jest? You think I was kidding when I said that I did not want our twins named after characters from Star Wars?"

"Luke and Leia are also twins," Teal'c deadpans.

"We agreed on Alexis. You love that it means 'defender'."

"It is not so wonderful a name as Leia; however, it will suffice," he concedes.


	88. Part 7 Chapter 12

**Two Weeks Later**

** "**I've got some down-time!" Jack says cheerfully as he comes into the house. "Your mom does, too, and we're going to the cabin!"

"We have school," Ty reminds him.

"Your mother and I have the first down time that we've had in ages, and we are going to use it!" Jack tells his kids.

Emma stares at him with fear in her eyes. Her two siblings might be able to miss a few days of school with little effect. But Emma's C-average counts on her being there and working her tail off every single day.

"You're only going to miss two days, it's going to be ok, I promise. Now, go pack your bags!" he says, excited to actually be getting out of town for the first time in what seemed like ages.

-0-0-0-

"We're just going to stop for gas, and then we're going to pick up your mother at the academy, and be on our way to nature!"

"This sounds lame, what are we going to do so far from civilization?" Emma complains.

"We're going to hike and fish!" Hannah says with a huge grin on her face. She loves nature even more than sports.

Jack pulls up in front of a gas station, and gets out to start pumping gas into his car.

"Hey, there. You just caught me fixing a carburetor. I didn't even hear you pull in," the owner of the gas station says.

"No, it's not a problem," Jack says waving him off.

"You sure? It's a full-service station. You know, the price includes yours truly," the man says proudly.

"I got it, thanks," Jack says, a little annoyed that the man is still talking to him. He just wants to be on his way.

"All right. At least I can wash your windows for you," the man says as he washes the windows of the mini-van. Suddenly, Jack sees a giant insect flying through the air. A distinctly alien-looking giant insect. No, this kind of thing can't happen when his kids are around. He has to do something to protect them.

"Get down!" he shouts to his family, as well as the gas station attendant. He a paranoid enough dad that in his family don't just have fire drills. They have tornado drills, and intruder drills, and gun-shot-from-the-street drills as well.

His kids know that when Dad tells them to get down, they'd better be down with their heads covered. It doesn't actually matter if the threat is real or imaginary. Although, it is a little odd that their father is including some stranger in his drills. Jacob doesn't obey right away, but he sees from a look in Jack's eye that this is serious. He doesn't understand it, but he trusts his son-in-law enough to cover the kids as well as he can in the car.

Jack opens the door of the truck, and grabs a box from under the seat. He spins the combination on the safety box to free a pistol.

"Does mom know that you have a gun in the van?" Emma asks with wide eyes.

Jack nods, and turns away from the van.

"Jeez, the money's inside in a lockbox under the counter," the gas station owner says, looking the three small children in the car. He can't believe this man is going to rob him with them watching. He can't figure out whether to call child protection services or the police first when this is all over.

"I'm not gonna rob you, just get down!" Jack insists.

The man drops down to the pavement saying, "Getting down." Jack takes a couple of shots at the bugs, but they fly away completely unaffected, "Don't kill me please! I'm a vet!"

"I'm not gonna kill you; get up," Jack says, helping the man stand up, "I'm Colonel Jack O'Neill, U.S. Air Force. Did you see anything?"

"Uh… just my life… flashing before my eyes. What the hell were you shooting at?"

"It's classified," Jack says. He turns to his kids, "Did you guys see it?"

Emma and Ty are shaking their heads, but Hannah is too scared to say anything. Jack clicks the safety on the gun, and puts it in the band of his pants as if it was a holster. Then he picks up the scared girl, "Its ok, Hannah bandana," he says softly.

The girl isn't crying, but she buries her head in his shoulder, desperate for comfort.

Jack dials his phone. "O'Neill for Hammond," he says.

-0-0-0-

A knock at the door startles Shelby out of the best sleep that she's had in two weeks.

That doesn't mean that it was particularly restful sleep. When you've got twin newborns, you'll take what you can get.

She's grateful that whoever it was had the sense to knock, and not ring the bell, so she's the only one that was woken up.

She sees Sam behind the door. "Hi! Apparently Jack got my children and father exposed to some sort of alien virus. Teal'c got exposed to at the base. I was at the academy giving a lecture, so I didn't get exposed. No-one knows how long this is going to last for, so Teal'c asked me to come and help you out with the babies."

"Is it dangerous?" Shelby asks.

"No. They're seeing inter-dimensional beings, but it's not making them sick or anything."

"Well, the twins are asleep, and I don't have to pick up the other kids from school for three hours," Shelby says.

Sam takes stock of the younger women. She's dressed in a bathrobe, and from the looks of it, she's been wearing the same bathrobe for several days. Her hair is twisted in a truly impressive tangle that stands out at a strange angle. She looks like she's aged a decade since her babies were born, and like she probably hasn't slept in all that time.

She remembers how hard it was to be a single mother to Ty, and he was only one baby. Shelby has twins, plus three older children to take care of. Granted, Shelby isn't a single mother, but with Teal'c being out on missions so often, and at the very least gone all day, she is a lot closer than either she or her husband would probably like to admit.

"Why don't you go take a nap?"

"I don't know if the twins will sleep long," Shelby says.

"I've got them. You're formula-feeding right?"

Shelby blinks in gratitude, "I'm going to shower!" she says with excitement.

-0-0-0-

"Grandpa," Hannah squirms with terror in her face as another worm squirms across the floor of the living room.

"Daniel told us on the phone they can't hurt us. They don't even occupy the same plane of existence, see," Ty says, rolling through them.

His little sister screams in horror, and tries to pull him away.

"Must you screech?" Emma asks in her most dignified tone.

"Grandpa, there are monsters," Hannah says, crawling into his lap. She isn't old enough to really understand the cover story. Honestly, she's more unnerved by the fact that there are things which can be seen, and not touched, than she is by the creatures themselves.

"There not monsters, honey, and they're not going to hurt you," Jacob assures her.

Ty looks at his scared little sister, and thinks up a new strategy. He disappears into his room, and builds himself a makeshift gun out of Legos. He returns, and starts pretending to shoot at the creatures.

Jacob knows that Jack doesn't approve of his kids playing with any kind of fake weapons, and is just about to take the toy away from his grandson.

Then he realizes that the girl in his arms in no longer terrified. Ty is hopping around the room taking decent shots at all the bugs, and not getting near any of the humans. He's doing commando rolls, ducks, and at one point a good imitation of a military crawl.

Jacob doesn't have the heart to make the boy stop.

-0-0-0-

Sam turned her phone onto vibrate as soon as she knew she was going to be around babies. She learned that lesson when Hannah is born. There is nothing worse than just getting a baby to sleep, and having her being woken up by someone who just called you to chat.

When the phone vibrates, it still wakes up one of the babies on her lap. Lexi stares at her with an annoyed look on her face that is 100% Shelby.

Sam bounces her until the baby closes her eyes, "O'Neill," she says into the phone.

"Sam, a team here figured out the alien device. We've got a cure; it spreads by touch. I've got a lot of people to go shake hands with. I just wanted you to know that the crisis is more or less over."

"Ok, thanks," she says, hanging up the phone.

Sam smiles down at the newborn in her arms. She slowly pulls the child closer to her. "I want one of these," she whispers.

She wonders how open her husband is going to feel to having a family so big it no longer fits inside a minivan.

-0-0-0-

Jack has spent enough time in black ops to know that his wife is not asleep as she lies next to him. He rolls over, and looks at her.

Her eyes stay closed for another minute or two in silent rebellion against him.

"Sam?" he prompts.

"It wouldn't be that crazy, would it?" she blurts. She has been thinking about an addition to their family hard enough that she has actually begun to believe that she had said something out load.

"I don't know, babe, I guess that would depend what we were talking about," her husband says softly.

"A baby," she says quickly.

He shakes his head, "You spend one afternoon with twins, and you want some of your own."

"Well, not twins, exactly. They are a lot of work. If this is crazy, that's ok. I can just go and spend some time with Shelby's babies. Actually, I plan on doing that anyway. I mean, she's pretty overwhelmed. She obviously hadn't showered for days. I remember that, when we didn't have time to sleep or eat or shower."

"Yet you've developed the urge to repeat this?" he asks, with an eyebrow raised in a strange query.

"I really do," she says with a flinch. Then she rushes on, "But if you don't, I completely understand. We have three children; that's enough."

He tucks a stand of hair behind her ear, "We had three children by accident."

"You regret them?" she asks with surprise, a sudden sinking in her stomach.

"No," he says firmly, "No, and I can't really imagine myself regretting a fourth kid either. Four is a lot, but we've got three adults in our family. That is something a lot of people aren't lucky enough to have. Money certainly isn't as issue. I don't see any reason why we shouldn't have four children."

"We shouldn't have another kid just because you don't see a reason not to have another kid. I actually want you to want this, Jack," she protests.

He smiles at her, "We have three kids, but I've never actually gotten to see you pregnant."

"I could be the only wife in the world that has a husband who can really sympathize with her. After all, you have been pregnant yourself."

"Hannah is just growing out of that stage where she says something adorable every single day. It would be nice to have a couple more years of that."

"So we're going to have a baby?" she asks a little tentatively.

"Yes," he says with a grin.

**The Next Day**

The O'Neills finally did make it up to the cabin. Between the Stargate program and his children's events, Jack doesn't get to his home away from home as often as he would like.

Even when he does get up there, the cabin isn't what it used to be, and Jack is really ok with that.

He's even ok when the nature hike turns into more of a ballet dance. He even participates.

Hannah is less ok. She plops down on the trail with arms and legs crossed in anger.

Sam and Jack use their silent parent communication to decide that Jack is going to be the one to go talk to her.

"I'm sorry, dad," she says as soon as he sits down.

"Hey, that's ok, Han; we all get angry sometimes."

"No, I'm sorry about them," she says, pointing to her brother and her sister.

"Hannah, they're having fun. That is the purpose of a vacation."

"They messed up our hike," she says.

"Well, you and I might have to go on a hike later," he tells her.

Hannah nods her head, but looks really sad.

"What?" he asks, stroking the French braid in her hair.

"Grandpa was going to bake cookies later. I wanted to help."

"Ok, you and I can hike right now," he says, helping her to her feet. They leave her siblings behind dancing, but he can see that he hasn't exactly solved the problem.

"Hannah, what is it?" he prompts.

"I don't like hiking!" she blurts out.

"Ok, what do you want to do?" he asks, bending down in front of her.

"You like hiking, dad," she tell him.

"I do," he smiles, "But I like hanging out with my kids more."

"They don't like hiking or baseball, all they ever do is girly stuff," she says, with more burden in her voice than Jack had ever hoped to hear from his youngest daughter.

"Honey, do you do all these boyish things because you think I want you to?" he asks with a choke in his throat.

She bites her lip, trying to keep the truth from spilling out. "Ty isn't the son you wanted."

"What on Earth made you think that?" he asks.

Hannah looks at her father in surprise.

"Ty is exactly who he is supposed to be. I love him, and I wouldn't change him for anything. I love my daughters, too. I would love you, Hannah, no matter who you decide to be. It would break my heart if you did anything just because you thought that's what I wanted you to do."

"Really?" she asks.

"Really, really," he says.

"I want to swim," she says.

"The lake is too cold, Hannah Banana. We'll have to wait until summer."

"No, dad; I want to quit soft ball, and swim."

"Okey-dokey, mermaid," he says.

"Really?" he asks.

"Yep, now what do you really want to do right now?"

"Dance?" she asks, still uncertain that this would be an acceptable choice.

"You've got it," he stays, standing up to brush the dust off his bad knees before taking his little daughter by the hand, and going back to the rest of the family.

"Would Grandpa care if I didn't make cookies with him?"

"Not at all. Mommy and Grandpa want you to be exactly who you are, too," he says.

Hannah skips as she walks, "Would he still let me lick the spoon, even if I didn't help?"

"I think there is a good chance, little one," he says.

His little girl grins up at him with a more carefree look than she's worn in a long time. Her tiny burdens have been released.


	89. Part 7 Chapter 13

**One Week Later**

SG-1's week of leave was much appreciated by Shelby. They fell into a wonderful rhythm with child care. Shelby took care of the twins while Teal'c got the other children ready for the day and out the door. After he dropped the kids off, Shelby would have a chance to shower and have breakfast.

Then they would spend some time together, with the babies. In the afternoon Teal'c would take a few hours of kal-no-reem while Shelby took care of babies. They had arranged the babies' sleeping schedule so that they usually went down for a nap just about the time that the kids came home from school. This allowed Shelby time to work with Rya'c on whatever homework he had while Teal'c helped the girls. When the girls were done with their homework, Teal'c would take them into the living room for a romp. Usually by then, the babies would be up, and Shelby would go take care of them. The family would sit down to a dinner, not long after that, and they would pass the babies around so everyone had their hands free to eat, just not all at the same time.

After dinner, Shelby would look after the twins while Teal'c sparred with his son, and the girls got ready for bed. She would read her sisters a bedtime story, and then Teal'c would take over baby duty for the night. Shelby would spend another hour or so helping Rya'c understand the details of Ta'uri math, grammar, myths or magic, as he referred to the various subjects.

Rya'c had decided that he was going to graduate "on time" or when he was eighteen. A rather ambitious endeavor, Shelby had tried to explain to him. He was determined, though, and smart. He didn't want to be left behind by Amy, no doubt.

So he was dealing not only with all of his regular subjects, which only a few months ago had been completely overwhelming, but also a self-study English II class, and Latin. The Latin had been chosen because it was so similar to a particularly dusty form of Goa'uld that Rya'c happened to know.* This allowed him to breeze through the content and earn electives that he badly needed to graduate.

Whenever Shelby got tired, she would go to bed, and sleep the whole night through. The real benefit of marrying a Jaffa, she had discovered, was that he never slept. He could take care of all the middle of the night diapering and feeding that needed to be done. He could also check on, and keep his teenage son company all night long.

Then he went back to work. When he wasn't on a mission, it wasn't so bad. Shelby could manage the days alone with the babies, and when they napped, she'd catch a nap to make up for the few hours of sleep she lost when her husband was kel-no-reeming. The problem was really when he was on a mission. Sometimes, of course the missions lasted days or even weeks. Those missions were rare, though. SG-1 was a first contact team. Usually, they went in, poked around for a ten or twelve hours, and then left.

It wouldn't have been so bad if his schedule had been more concrete. Daylight just didn't come at the same time everywhere in the universe. So Teal'c is sometimes gone when she needs him most, and sometimes around in the middle of the afternoon. She can never predict it, never count on it.

She can't complain though. They are her sisters, and it was her idea to make them part of her family. It was her idea to have a baby, although she didn't exactly count on two. She'd practically forced him to have his son here.

It's her own dang fault.

She kept telling herself that as she desperately tried to get the little kids ready for school.

"Ry'ac, can you put your dish away?" she asks. For a second, she thinks the teenager is ignoring her, and her anger is just about to boil over, then she notices the ear buds in his ears. She sighs, and takes care of the dish for herself. It's often easier to do things yourself than try to get "help".

"Can I have a tart?" Becky asks as she comes into the kitchen at the time when the family should have been going out the door. Shelby thought she had already eaten. She doesn't know why she thought that. It can't possibly be that hard to count up to three. Land sakes, ducks do a better job of knowing where their children are.

"There called pop tarts, 'tard," Tamara says, thinking that she is being terribly clever with the word play.

"Don't you dare call your sister that, ever again, apologize," Shelby says, popping pop tarts into the microwave while giving herself an internal lecture about the nutritional needs of small children. She's a nurse, for goodness sake; you think she could manage to at least give them a balanced breakfast before they made their way out the door.

Lexie starts to cry, and Shelby scoops her up and rocks her in arms without even giving a glance to the kid. She catches herself doing it, and offers the kid a big fake smile, thinking of all the damage she's doing to her children's neuropathways by not looking them in the face. She really sucks at this whole motherhood thing.

She grabs the pop tart out of the microwave, and hands it to her sister while say, "Car, car, car!" and taping Rya'c on the shoulder and pointing so he can understand through the heavy metal music. She slings a diaper bag over her arm with her free hand, and scoops up Luke, who is asleep, with the other. Luke wakes up, and screams with furry.

They are almost out the door when Becky stops dead in her tracks, causing Shelby to run her over. "I forgot," she says.

"Forgot what?"

"The fort project. We're supposed to make a fort like people lived in when they first came to America. They made all the trees stick up around the outside like this," she says holding her fingers up in the air.

"When?" Shelby asks.

"Is today Friday?"

"No, Thursday."

"Good, then, it's not due until tomorrow," Becky breathes a sigh of relief. Shelby isn't quite so lucky. From her point of view, it would have been better to have already failed than to have another thing added on to her check list.

"Ok, I'll get you those little popsicle sticks without the popsicles today," Shelby says.

"And glue," Becky adds.

"I'll get everything you need," Shelby says out loud. She hopes she will be able to resist the temptation to finish the project while the girl is at school. The only real shot this has of getting done on time is being done while the babies are taking their afternoon nap, and no-one else is in the house.

-0-0-0-

Shelby is early for the appointment. By the time the kids were dropped off, and the art supplies were bought, and the explosive poop diaper incident was dealt with in a public bathroom, there is only half an hour left before the twins' well-child appointment. It didn't pay to go home.

Shelby gives her name to the receptionist, and sits down in a chair, contemplating whether or not she dares catch a little sleep before her appointment. Teal'c won't be home until tomorrow at noon, and she needs a real nap before then. She's running on fumes as it is.

"Oh my gosh, your kids are adorable," the women next to her says. A baby nearer to his first birthday than his birth hands her a toy, and she grins at him, and says "thank you" before handing it back. When he reaches to take it, she pulls it away causing him to laugh hysterically.

"Thank you," Shelby says, hoping the conversation will end with that. She honest doesn't want to spend any more time talking to people who are better mother than her than she really has to.

"They are twins, aren't they?" the woman asks again.

On some level, Shelby realizes it's a legitimate question. Lexie is fairly dark. She's a bit lighter than Teal'c, but certainly in the range that you would call African-American. Luke, however, had blond hair. His eyes are brown, and his skin has almost a Greek complexion to it, but anyone who looked at him apart from his parents and sister would assume that he was Caucasian. She understands the curiosity, and she even knows they aren't really being racist. But that doesn't stop her from wanting to punch them in the face sometimes.

"Yes, they're twins. Their father is black," she says. She has never brought herself to call Teal'c 'African-American', even though she knows that's how most people would describe him. He doesn't really meet either of those descriptions.

"I bet they keep you pretty busy. When I just had one tike that small, I was pretty sure I was going to go crazy," the woman replies.

"Indeed," Shelby borrows from her husband's language, knowing that less is often more in conversations like this.

"You should come to our playgroup," the woman says brightly.

"Playgroup? They haven't even mastered holding their own heads up. I don't think they're quite ready to be working on their social skills."

"The baby playgroup isn't really for the babies. It's for the moms. We get together, and talk about what it's like to be a parent."

"I'm a little too busy with the actual parenting of children to talk about it."

"Everyone there is busy. I mean, there is this one women there who has three kids. I don't know how she does it! I'll maybe have another, when this one is half-grown."

"I have five," Shelby says. It's not something she admits to strangers very often. Well, ever really. In fact, she's not sure she's ever said the words aloud. They weren't all her kids, not really, so sometimes it feels a little dishonest to claim them as her children even if she is the one that does the bulk of the work to raise them.

"Five?" the woman beside her asks in shock. She clearly is thinking that Shelby isn't old enough to have five children.

"Well, one is my step-son, and two are my sisters, and then I've got the twins here," she says, blowing her hair out of her eyes with her mouth. She has perfected a lot of hands free actions. She feels like she hasn't had a hand free since she gave birth.

The nurse calls the women beside her, and Shelby is immensely grateful. The sight of the nurse also makes her more than a little jealous. Officially, she's on maternity leave. Before the twins came along, she'd planned on going back to work as soon as they were old enough for day care.

Now, she doesn't think that's really an option. If she can't do a good job of parenting when that's all she does, than how will she do it when she's got that plus a job on her plate?

Luke starts to fuss, and she picks up a twin in both of her arms. Raising five children isn't hard when you've got two parents, one of whom never sleeps. When you've only got one parent, though, it's a pretty tall order.

**One Week Later**

Janet and Daniel share a glass of orange juice, and debate the merits of an article on chemistry they'd read in a magazine. Neither of them were experts in the field, and this made it more fun to debate than something they would be on unequal footing about.

When they go to bed at 9:30 (Janet had been feeling tired lately) Dominic and Cassie are still sitting on the living room couch giggling at each other, and whispering sweet nothings.

Daniel wanted to kick Dominic out of his house, but he knew that his relationship with both Cassie and Janet would suffer if he did.

So he just followed his wife upstairs so he could give her a back massage before she fell asleep.

An hour later he wakes up to his wife shaking him, "Daniel!"

"Baby incoming?" he asks.

"I'm going to take a shower really fast. Can you tell Cassie that we are leaving, and ask her to take care of her siblings?"

They had decided months ago that if the new baby came in the middle of the night, Cassie would watch her siblings for that day. Daniel thought she was too young for the job, but Janet and Cassie had both insisted that she was old enough. It seemed so close to the old argument, that Daniel decided not to fight it off.

When he goes to wake up his daughter he finds Dominic in bed next to her.

"Are you kidding me?" he practically shouts.

The boy jumps up, and starts pulling clothes on.

"It's after midnight, Cass," Daniel says trying to keep the judgment out of his voice, and utterly failing.

"Sorry, sir, I need to get home," Dominic says pushing past.

"Sir, I catch you in bed with my daughter and you call me sir," Daniel mutters as the kid runs down the hallway.

"Any particular reason you're in my room in the middle of the night?" Cassie asks.

"Yes, your mom is about to bring new life into the world," he says.

"Mom's having the baby?" Cassie says, sitting up.

"I was waking you up to ask you to take care of the kids for the night, but that seems like a pretty adult thing to ask after finding a boy in your bed."

"You're saying having a boy in my bed isn't adult?" Cassie asks.

"Just watch the kids, OK?" he asks desperately trying to keep the furry out of his voice. Things have been good lately in the family – great, even. He's more than a little afraid that it could all unravel if he opens any of the old wounds.

He is so not OK with finding a boy in his daughter's room in the middle of the night. But he has to pretend that he is.

-0-0-0-

Daniel wants to ask his wife how she's feeling. The last time she had a baby, she sobbed alone in the hospital room and didn't tell him. He's stopped by the fact that it seems really insensitive to ask someone who just pushed a human out of a very small opening how they are doing.

She smiles down at her son, Andrew.

But she did that with Will as well.

Janet looks up, and sees her husband looking at her with concern.

"I'm fine," she tells him.

He raises one eyebrow in a gesture of doubt.

"I really am. I know that the post-partum depression is usually worse on the second kid. Who knows what my hormones might do to me in the next couple of days, or months. But right now I am just happy. Our family feels complete."

Daniel makes a face that looks like he's questioning the last statement.

"Oh, trust me mister, we're done having kids."

"I wasn't thinking about having more kids. I was just thinking about how there could easily be more people added on to our family before too long."

"How?" she asks.

"Well considering the fact that Dominic apparently sleeps at our house, we might end up with an unwanted son-in-law or grandchild before too long."

"She's seventeen, she's not getting married or pregnant," Janet says.

"She could, Janet. If she's having sex she could be pregnant. As a doctor, you should know that."

"I do, but Daniel she's doing everything she can to prevent it," Janet says.

"This is not a discussion to be having when our new baby has just entered the world. We should just be happy," Daniel says, leaning forward to get a closer glimpse at his son.

Janet hands the baby over, knowing that she's been hogging him. "I don't think our family is going to be growing any time soon, but you're right, it's not complete. Nothing so dynamic as a family is ever finished. This guy here is going to grow-up and be one his own someday too."

"But not for a long, long time, little one," Daniel says grinning at his son, "Before that, there are going to be plenty of faery stories, and baseball games, and games of Legos."

"I don't think you have games of Legos. I just think you build things out of them," his wife corrects.

"Well you and me are going to figure that out, aren't we, bud?" Daniel asks the baby in his arms.

***Teal'c calls something Daniel says is Latin Goa'uld in Argos. This is probably one of those things the writers of Stargate would rather we forgot now that we've established Latin as the language of the Ancients. However, it is really going to make Rya'c's life easier.**


	90. Part 7 Chapter 14

Shelby has avoided bringing it up for a lot longer than she should have. It's just… when Teal'c is here, there is no problem. When she is removed from it by a couple of days, or even minutes, all the problems seem smaller. She thinks that next time she'll be able to conquer the problems with sheer force of will. She doesn't want her husband to know what a failure she is.

Now she's realized that she just can't be a good mother, no matter how much she tries. Today, it took her almost an hour to get both babies feed and changed enough to stop screaming. She's pretty sure that Tamara failed her science test, based on what she knew about it last night, and if she was grading Rya'c's persuasive essay, she'd give him a negative million for the score. Well, maybe part of that grade came from the argument the two of them had had when she was helping him finish it.

Anyway, she wasn't going to let the kids suffer anymore.

When he goes into kel-no-reem she follows him.

He raises and eyebrow at her.

"I can't do it."

"To what are you referring?" he asks.

A tear rolls down her face. She's brave, but not brave enough for this. "I can't be a good mother."

Teal'c steps forward, touching her face softly, "You are a good mother."

"No, you don't understand. It's too much. You don't see it, because it's easy when you are home. When you are gone, though, I'm just barely able to hold everything together, and sometimes, not even quite."

"The children are taken care of," he says with confidence.

"You're not getting it! It's not even safe. They don't get fed when they should. Or put to bed. They are barely bathed, and they're not always wearing clean clothing! Forget about getting all of their school work done. I'm lucky if I can keep them alive! They deserve better than this! It kills me that our kids aren't taken care of! I don't want them to live like this."

He studies her for a long moment, wishing he knew more about Earth culture. Wishing he knew what sort of response would be appropriate, what sort of response that his wife wants. "Do you wish us to give some of our children to others?"

"What? Give away our kids? Do Jaffa do that?" she asks in horror.

He shakes his head, "I thought it might be a tradition among the people of Earth. I cannot think of another solution to our problem."

"I need you here more," she says.

"Do you wish me to quit my job at the SGC? I do not know how we would take care of the material needs of our children if neither of us had a job," he says.

"No, I don't want you to quit. I was just wondering if…I don't know you can cut back on your hours a little bit. My maternity leave is going to be over in a few weeks, and I wouldn't even think of going back if you're working this much. Maybe I don't need to, but if you're traveling all the time I don't know how we are going to manage."

"You wish me to leave my place on SG-1?" Teal'c asks.

"Maybe? Just for a while? Otherwise, maybe they would be willing to allow you to take a few less trips through the gate."

"That would require me transferring to another team. SG-1 is a frontline team, and membership on it requires frequent trips through the gate."

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't even be asking you to take a hit with your career. If you can think of anything else that we can do I'm willing to do it. I'm just at the breaking point. I mean, the kids have a four day weekend coming up, and you're going to be gone for the whole thing. I am going to have to take care of five kids for that whole time. Rya'c has his first research paper to write over the weekend. Based on how his paper last night went, it is going to be pulling teeth."

"Let me consider this matter," Teal'c says.

He doesn't miss the panic in his wife's eyes. He realizes how hard this must have been for her to come to him, and he knows that if he doesn't give her a bit of help now she's going to sink.

"You can spend the long weekend with Bra'tac and the rebel Jaffa."

"Are you serious? You want me to travel to another planet with five children? That sounds like a lot more work than helpfulness," Shelby explains in disbelief.

"Among the Jaffa, all women help in the childrearing responsibilities. There will be plenty of people there to help you."

"Ok. I mean, it's only for four days. If it makes things worse, I can always come back here. I kind of wish that you could join me."

"I have a mission," her husband replies stoically.

"I know," she says trying not to let too much sadness get into her voice.

"By the time that you return, I hope to have a more permanent solution devised."

"One that doesn't involve us getting rid of any of our children?" she asks.

"Indeed."

**Three Days Later**

"Tek-ma-te, Mater Bra'tac," Shelby says as she came through the gate. Those were the first words that she ever learned in the Jaffa language. Back when she first learned them, she did not even have the smallest understanding of what they truly meant. She knew that they were a greeting. She knew that they meant that you respected someone. But she didn't feel all of the things that she now felt when she said them.

Jaffa language was deeper than human language, there was no other way to explain it. You couldn't understand what it meant unless you have put in hours of meditating, and sparring. Tek-ma-te was a position of the body as much as it was a word. It was a thought and a feeling and a way of being much more than it was a greeting.

"Tek-ma-te, Shelby," he says smiling, and returning the bow. She can tell that he is impressed with how far she has advanced in her martial arts since he last saw her (even though she hasn't done anything since the babies were born). She knows this even though he doesn't say anything out loud. It isn't reading the mind, quite. Just a soul searching body language reading thing that the Jaffa have mastered. Something that she is learning from her husband, little by little.

"This is really another world?" Becky asks, running off to touch a tree, just because the tree is not a tree of Earth.

"Stay close," Tamara warns nervously.

Becky looks back and Shelby wondering for a second if she isn't being a bit too courageous. This is, after all, a whole different planet.

"Stay in sight," Shelby encourages as the child puts her hand on the three, and the family makes their way to the village.

"The children do not need such a warning," Bra'tac says.

"Surely your children have some sort of limit. What is beyond the village?" Shelby asks.

"No-one would let them go beyond the village," Bra'tac says calmly.

"That's what I'm doing, not letting them go beyond the village. Children need limits." Shelby says this with confidence, even though she's not completely sure why this is the case. She read it in a parenting book. She figures saying things like that from time to time will keep other people from catching on to the fact that she has no idea how to raise children. Teal'c made sure to make her motives for taking the children off world seem more like a vacation than a last ditch effort to maintain his wife's slipping sanity.

Some children are playing a game of jump-rope. Becky runs up, and asks if she can play in English. The children that she is talking to are young, young enough that they don't understand much of what she says. Rebel Jaffa do not teach their children the language of humans in the same way that the people of Earth do. They let her play anyway.

Tamara is at the age where it is a little harder to integrate into new situations. She sits down on the grass, and some girls about her age run up and start talking. They are a bit more fluent in English, but it is still a bit difficult for them.

Rya'c greets some of his old friends with the Jaffa hand/shake hug before they run off together to spar.

Shelby sighs in contentment, thinking that perhaps her husband was right, and this is going to be an easy weekend after all. Then both of the twins start to cry at the same time. The nearest women takes one of them out of her arms, and starts to comfort it. She would have done more if she'd been more familiar with Ta'uri diapering principles.

Community is a beautiful thing.

**The Next Day**

Bra'tec is surprised by the degree to which Ry'ac has gone native. He sits, pounding on the strange device they brought with them that they refer to as a "laptop".

"What are you doing?" Bra'tac asks, sitting next to the boy who seems to have regressed from man to boy in the short time that he was on Earth.

"I am writing a paper."

"There is no paper in that."

"That's just what they call it. You have to take a whole bunch of things that other people have said, and you have to write them all together with your own thoughts. It's for school."

"I thought that you hated this school that you went to," the older Jaffa says.

Rya'c shrugs his shoulders.

"Put away this device, and listen to me for a time," Bra'tac commands.

Rya'c closes it with a dramatic roll of his eyes which shows that he would really rather not.

"Why have you become so consumed in school?" Bra'tac has seen Ry'ac working on school a lot since he arrived. He's also seen Shelby helping the boy a lot more than she had time for. Even with the other women around to help, she's busy enough with the other children. Bra'tac can see all the things that Shelby wouldn't admit. He has even guessed his former student's real reason in sending his wife for a visit. Rya'c is old enough to be taking away from the problem instead of adding to it, and Bra'tac can see that it would be better if someone who wasn't related to him was the one to tell him that.

"I want to graduate on time. In order to do that, I'm have to take a whole bunch of extra classes."

"You mean that you are not required to work this hard?"

"I have to if I'm going to graduate on time."

"What if you were not going to?" the teacher asks softly.

Rya'c stares at him for a moment, not fully processing what is being said.

"Would you then have time to assist your mother in the care of the younger children and the keeping of the house?"

"She's not my mother, and that's women's work."

"The woman that your father has chosen to wife is your mother, or at least close enough. This is truer when it is a woman as noble as Shelby of the Ta'uri. As for it being the work of a women, a real man does whatever work is required of him. Would you think it was women's work if you had to feed a fire to keep warriors from freezing in the night?"

Rya'c shakes his head.

"I did not consider it women's work to teach and care for either your father or you. You should be glad of this."

"I am very grateful for everything that you have done for my family, Master Bra'tec."

"The proper way to show that gratitude would be to do more things for your family now. Your family has need of many things, young Rya'c."

Rya'c looks at Shelby, who is translating a nursery rhyme one of the old Jaffa is saying into English, much to the delight of her little sisters. She is rocking one of the twins, while the nursery rhyme reciter holds the other.

He tries to remember the last time that he saw Shelby without a child in her arms.

He had been a warrior once; not long ago, even. But now, now Shelby was teaching him, as if he was a child. Bra'tac was right; he was old enough to teach himself. He was old enough to teach his sisters. He would not shame his master again.

**Two Days Later**

"We've got a surprise for your dad," Sam says when she picks up her kids from school. She tosses them shirts and says, "Put these on over your clothes."

"I don't get it," Hannah says as she pulls one of the shirts out of the bag.

"It says we're big sisters," Emma says, not sure if her kindergarten sister is having difficulty reading the words or understanding the meaning behind them.

"Mine says big brother," Ty says quick to correct any accusation of the feminine. He's old enough that he's starting to get teased about that.

"Are you having a baby?" Emma asks, sounding… worried.

"Yeah, we are, and you are all going to be part of the announcement to Daddy," Sam says with a grin.

"Which of you is going to have the baby?" Hannah asks.

"Only in our family would that be a valid question," Sam says with a sigh, "The baby is growing inside of me, right now."

"How did it get there?" Hannah asks.

"Trust me, you so do not want to know," Ty says.

"What?" Sam asks, completely surprised that her son knows the answer to that question himself. He is after all only nine years old.

"School," Emma says with a shrug.

Sam has always believed that explaining things openly and honestly to your children is the best way to prevent them from making any bad decisions. She always thought she would be the type of mother who would explain sex to her children long before any of the other parents did.

Apparently, she'd been naïve to think that nine was still too young.

She wonders if her son – the one with a closet full of dolls, the one who wore a dress to his parent's wedding, the one who danced ballet and played hockey – she wonders if he might need a special sex talk.

Did people include homosexuality in a sex talk with nine-year-olds, or did that come later?

Maybe she can dump this one on Jack, and take the much easier one with Emma for herself.

"Hannah, the baby got into me, because your father and I love you and your brother and your sister so much that we decided we needed more people to love," Sam says hoping that is an appropriate sex talk for a five year old. Hannah nods her head, satisfied by the answer/compliment.

-0-

Jack just took one of the longest showers in his life, and he's still not sure that he got the sand out of everywhere. He may make fun of planets full of trees, but he really hates the sandy planets.

Sam called him to say that she and the kids were picking him up from the base. Jack had thought that this was an utterly ridiculous plan, because his car was already on base. She'd assured him that they would drive together the next morning.

When he gets topside, he sees them – his entire family in matching red t-shirts. It isn't until a few steps closer that he reads them.

First his wife's "Hi daddy", all on her stomach. Odd; Sam hates pet names. She never called him "Daddy", even in front of the kids when they were learning to talk. Maybe "your daddy", but never just "Daddy".

Then Ty's, "I'm a big brother." Well, duh.

And Emma's "I'm a big sister." Established.

He is totally expecting something like, "I'm a little sister" from his youngest daughter. Then he sees that she too is wearing an "I'm a big sister" shirt.

He runs the last couple of steps that separate him from his family, and pulls his wife in into a hug. It only lasts a couple of seconds before he pulls the rest of his family into it as well.

After a few hugs, kisses, and excited chat they all pile into the car together.

"You realize that one more kid is going to result in a minivan, right?" Sam asks her husband.

He groans. "Can we do station wagon? They are at least a little cooler."

"Nope, we're going to have a minivan full of kids, and you're going to love it, mister."

"At least we can counter the dorkiness of our minivan with the coolness of our motorcycle."

"I think you mean _my_ motorcycle," Sam giggles.

**Note: The obvious solution to Shelby and Teal'c's problem would be to hire a nanny to help take care of the children. However, I do not think that either spouse in this relationship would think of that solution. Teal'c is from a culture that I don't believe would rely on hired help for child care, the community would take care of that. In another way, Shelby is also from a culture where hiring child care would be a bit of a foreign concept. Poor people just don't have the resources to do that. (Some kids I've worked with don't have the vocabulary for worlds like "babysitter" or "nanny" whereas rich kids usually have like 10 words for it in their vocabulary). Of course, they have the money to hire someone, it's just not a concept that would easily pop into their heads.**


	91. Part 7 Chapter 15

**Spoilers for "Changeling".**

**Two Days Later**

Jack and Sam had decided that it would be best if he was the one to give his son the sex talk. It's a little tardy, since Ty has already been given one at school. They had decided that it was best if all of their children received sex talks from a same-gender parent. Well, mostly Sam had decided. The reality that Sam had been willing to risk doing three talks to Jack's one if this new baby turned out to be a girl should have convinced him, but he would rather talk to three girls than one Ty.

"Hi, buddy," Jack says entering his son's room. The boy is sitting on the floor coloring a picture full of flowers and fairies; not a very promising start.

"Oh, no," Ty says.

"What?" Jack says. He's dreading this conversation, but he had no idea he'd done something to tip his son off to that fact.

"You don't call me 'buddy' very often anymore. When you do, it usually means we're about to have a serious talk."

"Well, we are, but it's not a bad kind of serious," Jack assures his son. They wait in silence for a second. Ty pushes the coloring out of reach. "Your mom mentioned you'd been learning about… reproduction in school," Jack begins.

"Yeah, and puberty; that stuff is nasty. I don't ever want to grow up."

"I just wanted to check with you, and see if you had any questions."

"About puberty?"

"Or… other things. Like reproduction."

Ty considers his father for a long second, and Jack can tell he's measuring him up. Jack tries not to look like he's panicking.

"Yeah, not really about the sex stuff. More the stuff that comes before."

"Kissing?" Jack asks, hoping it isn't anything that comes between the kissing and the sex. They wouldn't talk about those sort of details in school, would they?

"No, like the finding someone you love. All of that mushy stuff."

"Ok," Jack says, finding himself back on comfortable ground. Well, almost.

"What does falling in love feel like? How do you know when you've done it?"

"Well, I think it's a little bit different for every person. You feel comfortable around them, you just fit. You want to spend a lot of time with them, and you can't think about anything else."

"When does it happen?"

"Love? That doesn't usually happen until you're grown up. Crushes are different. Some people start having crushes when they are your age."

"The girls already chase boys around the playground, and say they're going to kiss them. Some of them probably really would if the playground supervisors weren't watching. Lizzie Martins and Toby Wilson are going out."

Jack blinks in surprise. His son has classmates that are dating? "Your sister isn't involved in the running around and kissing boys thing, is she?" he asks with a new panic rising in his heart. Maybe he did pick the easy kid to give the sex talk to after all.

"Emma? No, the only time she does that is when all the kids of SG-1 get together, and play Dannings and aliens, and that's different." Little did Ty know that game was not at all different for one tiny little 'Danning' named Olivia who always found a way to make him her alien.

"Listen, Ty, girls grow up a lot faster than boys do, and that's ok. Each individual person grows up at a different rate. This whole romance/dating thing, that's not something you should rush. You've got plenty of time for dating later on. You should never feel like you should date or flirt or chase girls unless you want to date or flirt or chase girls. Then you should only do those things with someone you actually want to, you understand?" Jack says carefully hoping this gender neutral ending was accepting enough.

Ty nods his head.

"Any other questions?"

"Just one. It's a little more scientific."

Jack cringes, wondering what kind of anatomical question he's going to have to answer. "Ok," he says, hoping he doesn't look as uncomfortable as he feels.

"How did Hannah grow inside of your stomach if you don't have a uterus?"

**The Next Day**

Shelby walks out of the bedroom with a baby in each arm to see Rya'c wrestling with her sisters in the living room. It's a cross between the martial arts he's been trained in almost since his birth, and something he must have seen on one of those really horrid wrestling shows on TV. She wishes she could monitor his TV viewing more, but he doesn't sleep, while she does.

"They have to finish their homework," she says.

"It's done, and I checked it. They did great," Rya'c assures her.

"Ok, what about your homework?" she asks.

"Finished."

"Well, if you're done with all of your homework, why don't you get ready for an exam in one of your correspondence courses?"

"I'm dropping them," he says.

"What? Why?" she really hopes that the reason doesn't have to do with his girlfriend. Shelby thinks the boy is more than a little obsessed with her. More than he should be at sixteen. Teal'c seems to think that there is nothing wrong with it, which kind of makes her wonder exactly what her husband had been doing at sixteen .

"It's just not that important that I graduate early," the teenager says with a shrug.

Shelby's thoughts suddenly go in the other direction. She knows that Rya'c's girlfriend was a big part of the reason that Rya'c was so serious about graduating with his peers in the first place. "Did you and Amy break up?"

"No, and I'm still going to try to take a class or two over the summer, and graduate in three years. I'm just not trying to do it in two years anymore. It was too much pressure."

"Ok," Shelby says, feeling like she is not getting the whole story. Maybe, if she could just think of the right question to ask, she could get him to confess to everything until this whole story started to make sense. "Was there a certain subject that was hard for you? Maybe I could help you with it some more."

"Ugh! That is so the point. I don't want you to be helping me all the time!" he says in exasperation.

Shelby fights to keep herself from crying, "Right, sorry. I'll try not to bug you all the time."

"It's not that," the boy says, feeling like a heel, "I just mean that sometimes I feel like you ended up helping me when you had more important things that you should have been doing."

"School is very important, Rya'c," she tells him, hoping that the idea of dropping out hasn't occurred to the kid.

"I know, but it's also important for the girls. Talking to those babies is also important. We're doing a unit on human development in Mrs. Jeske's class right now, and we're learning about how important it is to give babies face-to-face time. They are forming neuropathways, and if they don't have social interaction, their brains are stunted."

"I take care of my children," Shelby says, with much more of an edge in her voice than she meant to. It sounded for a minute like he was accusing her of child neglect. To a person who came from a neglectful home, that was no small matter.

"I know, but Bra'tec said that I'm old enough to be taking something away from the pile instead of adding it on. Well, actually, his words were a lot more Jaffa-like and noble-sounding, but they meant the same thing."

Shelby's heart shatters a little, and she walks over to give the boy a hug. "Rya'c, you can't drop your classes. You've already done a big chunk of work in both of them, and we are not about to waste all of those late-night study sessions. I love that you are willing to sacrifice for your sisters. It means a lot to me. More than you will ever know. You're not going to though. I was a child that ended up raising children. It's not right. I'm not going to let it happen to you."

Rya'c looks down at the girls who are still sitting on the floor, even though the wrestling match ended a long time ago. He doesn't know that much about the Dunn family's history, only what his father told him during his scoldings whenever he was disrespectful to his stepmother. He has figured out, though, that she was very young when she started being a mother.

"You were a child then. I'm not a child."

"You are, honey," Shelby says sadly.

"Not like you were. I know that I'm not an adult. I sort of like this life state you humans have invented and called adolescence. Most planets don't have it, you know. I don't really want to be an adult, not yet anyway. I certainly don't want to be a father. I do, however, want to be a big brother. I want to spend time with the little kids. Maybe even some time with the babies. I draw the line at diapers, though. That is a human invention that I do not support. Maybe I can keep doing my classes, but only at night, on my own, without taking up a whole bunch of your time. I might not get as good grades, but that would be fine."

"You don't need as much help as you used to, but you'll still ask for my help if you get stuck, right?"

"Ok," Rya'c says.

"I'm old enough to help, too!" Becky Lynn says, rushing into the kitchen to do the dishes.

"I'm going to make faces at Lexi so her neptunes grow right," Tamara says, taking the baby out of Shelby's arms.

"Neurons," Rya'c corrects.

In a few days the girls' youthful enthusiasm for helpfulness dies down, but Rya'c's does not.

**Two Months Later**

There are dangers in loving a good man. The dangers are even greater if you dare to love a good man who is also strong, and brave, and who saves the world on a regular basis.

It's a darn foolish thing to love a man like that.

Shelby knew that all too well.

Her husband was laying in his hospital bed, because he'd shared his symbiote with Bra'tac. It was the right thing to do of course, because Bra'tec was also a good man. Bra'tac had also saved countless worlds, and countless lives.

The only flaw in the plan was that the sacrifice was probably for nothing. Both of them were probably going to end up dead.

"Teal'c," she whispers to him, running her hand over his face. It's a sign of affection among the Jaffa. More private and intimate than kissing. It's something that he does for her whenever she is feeling distressed. She wishes that doing it to her husband's unconscious body had the same effect on her that it had when he did it to her.

Hammond walks into the room, "I think we have a solution. Tretonin."

"The scientists have been working on that for months, and they haven't gotten anywhere. He needs a symbiote. Someone needs to get my husband a symbiote. Hell, if the rest of you are too scared, I'll go and get one myself."

"At this point, he's so weak that it might not work. His body could reject the symbiote," Janet says sadly coming up behind the General.

"We have to try. We don't have another option. I can tell you right now that that magic medicine they've been testing on the rats is not going to work," she says firmly. Her husband is dying, and she would do anything to save him. She's not going to try a bunch of experimental procedures though. Not when something else shows a greater promise of working.

"We're not the only ones who have been working on it. We gave some samples to Area 51, and they've made some good progress. *

"How good?" Shelby asks.

"I would not be endorsing this plan unless I felt it was Teal'c's best chance," Janet says.

Shelby looks at the older woman for a long second before she backs down. She trusts Janet. She's seen the women make a lot of tough decisions under a lot of fire. It's not like they are always the right ones. No-one is that good. But Janet manages to keep a lot of people alive in situations where no-one else could.

"Ok," she assents.

**The Next Day**

Teal'c opens his eyes. Before, when they were closed, he saw things that were not there. He is startled by this, scared by it, and then he remembers that it has a name: dreaming. This is not the first time that he dreamed. He did it, long ago, when he was just a boy before his prim'ta. It was a century ago, so it was no wonder that the act seemed unfamiliar to him now.

Panic fills his heart as he remembers; Jaffa don't dream. Well, to be more accurate, they do dream, but only when their symbionts are dead, and they are close to death.

His hand reaches over and punches the button which calls the nurses with all of his might.

It's his wife who arrives. She's not wearing her uniform, and it's clear the only reason she is here is him. This isn't at all surprising, since she hasn't gone back to work after the twins were born, but it's a bad omen all the same.

Worse than that, her eyes are rimmed in the tell-tale sign that she's been crying. It takes a lot to make his wife cry. Being abused didn't do it. Being abandoned didn't do it. The only think he'd ever seen do it before was things that she'd perceived as her own personal failings.

Apparently, widowhood was also capable of doing the trick.

"I'm dying, aren't I?" he asks her.

"No, what makes you say that?" she asks, coming to sit down on the edge of his bed.

"I dreamed," he says.

"You dreamed about yourself dying?" she asks, seeming relieved that that is the only cause of his statement.

"No, it was… complicated dream, but it was not of my death. Jaffa do not dream."

"Well, Jaffa with symbiotes don't dream," Shelby says, looking nervous. When she saw that the plan had worked, she had concluded that she had made the right choice. Now, looking at her husband, who was very much alive, it occurred to her for the first time that he might not exactly see it that way.

"All Jaffa have symbionts, that is the definition of the species," he says.

"That might not be true anymore," she says with a flinch, "See, you shared your symbiote with Bra'tac in order to keep him alive until help came. It worked, you both made it, but your symbiote couldn't handle the stress. Janet put you on tretonian. It seems to be working as your immune system now."

"Why has another symbiote not been procured?" he asks angrily.

"Well, it's not as if the things were just laying around; besides, Janet thinks that even if she could get you one, it might not do any good. Your body would probably reject it."

"Nonetheless, it should be tried."

"Hey, I thought that in the beginning as well. But not now, I mean, now we know that the tretonian is working. The symbiote only _**might**_ work. To switch now would be madness."

"I am Jaffa," he says firmly.

Shelby realizes with a start that this would be very hard for her husband. That losing his symbiote is as big of a hit to his identify as gaining one would be to her.

"You're the same person you were a week ago."

"I was Jaffa," he corrects.

"You're still Jaffa, Teal'c." He doesn't respond for quite some time, so she finally mutters, "Anyway, I'm glad you lived, even though apparently you aren't."

"Without me, who would care for the children?" he says without the tone of a sneer, but she knows that if he was human, or at least if he was _more_ human, his voice would have had that quality to it.

Selby took a psychology class back in nursing school. She knows that lashing out like that is normal for someone in pain, particularly emotional pain. She knows that she shouldn't take it personally. But all of that training goes out the window when it is your own husband who is saying something unbelievably cruel to you. Shelby gets up, and walks out of the room.

**Three Days Later**

There are definitely some down sides to Teal'c's newfound need to sleep. He is a lot less able to deal help with their growing family. It does have one huge benefit that Shelby can't deny.

The first night that Teal'c is home from the hospital, she curls up in his arms, and finds something that she has been missing; strong arms around her all through the night.

***We come to the first part of the story where I regret not having SG-1 meet the Tok'ra. I figured I could save Jacob another way, and we wouldn't need the Tok'ra in our story. That has actually worked quite well, right up until now. I'm just going to make humans a little more awesome than they were in the story, so that Teal'c doesn't have to die.**


	92. Part 8 Chapter 1

**A Week Later**

Jack is by his wife's side when his little daughter Jenny enters the world for the first time. It's the first time he's been able to help her through a birth. She helped him through one of course, but that's different.

Neither of them can help but feel that something is missing. They're back to having two daughters, but it really feels like it should be three.

**Five Months Later**

**Spoilers for "Heroes"**

He refused to leave her side. He knew that it was foolishness as much as those around him. They tried to get him to come away to eat, or sleep, or go home to his children.

He just kept his vigil over her dead body.

She was his wife, and she was dead.

This is not the first time it had been true. He'd lost a wife before, and he'd thought that this was the worst thing that could ever happen to him. But he'd hardly known Sha'uri. He'd spent a year with her, and for a good part of that time the two of them hadn't even spoken the same language.

It was different with Janet. True, the two of them had only been together a bit more than six years, but they wouldn't have known each other any better if it had been a lifetime. He'd reached the point where he knew her ever action from the way she raised the dish soap up and down as she poured it out of the dispenser to the way she did CPR with a distinctive two hard, and one soft push of the palm of her hand.

"Sir, we're going to have to take her now," a nurse says softly, thinking to herself that dealing with the grieving anthropologist is way above her pay grade.

"You're taking her? To where?" he asks lifting up his head in confusion. His eyes are red beneath the rims of his glasses, and there are huge droplets on the glasses that used to be tears, before they dried. He has a pounding headache, and it's hard for him to form any thoughts through it, but he knows that they shouldn't take her anywhere, and that if they are going to take her somewhere he ought to go to.

"We're taking her to the morgue, sir," the poor nurse whispers hoping that the word isn't going to send him over the edge.

"Ok," he says standing beside the bed, clearly ready to follow wherever he was led.

"Sir, you can't come," she whispers.

"Why not?" he asks looking at her confused.

The nurse tries to form some answer which won't be horribly insulting. She rejects, "because it's weird," "It's just not done," and "what are you nuts?" before landing on a gentle, "It's cold there."

"I'm already cold," he says in a voice that clearly shows he thinks the matter is settled, and not at all in the way that she thinks it is settled.

"I've got this," Shelby says walking in, and touching her fellow nurse lightly on the arm by way of tag team. The other women nods her head before gratefully escaping.

"Daniel, we've got to take her now," she says.

He shakes his head.

"Daniel, you know that we can't just leave a dead body in an exam room forever. We've got to get her ready for burial."

"They wouldn't let me see my parents after they died," Daniel says as much to his own surprise as Shelby's. He hadn't actually thought the words before they came spilling out of his mouth.

"Well, you've seen Janet."

"It's not her, anymore, not really," he says looking at her sadly.

"That's right, so you've got to let her body go," Shelby says softly.

"It's not her, but it's the closest thing that I have left," Daniel says stroking the hand had had grown cold hours back.

"That's not true, her spirit is still out there. It's with God," Shelby says.

Daniel laughs, and the sound has an unnerving echo in the room, "Which God? The ones we've been fighting against for years?"

"I'm talking about God-God, not some Goa'uld."

"From where I'm sitting, any god who lets a person like Janet die is no different from a Goa'uld. Go ahead, take the body, I'll be in my quarters."

**Five Days Later**

At first Cassie didn't notice that her dad wasn't home. Well, of course she noticed it, but it didn't really matter to her. When someone dies, especially someone as young as Janet, their family is never left alone for long.

Her mother's family, and Catherine and Ernest, the closet thing her father had to family, and all of SG-1 which had become family to them, were around her ever hour of the day.

Someone was always cleaning something around their house or taking one of her siblings home with them for the night, or holding her when she cried.

Then the funeral came, and slowly they all trickled home. They were leaving them all to get back to life as it had been before.

Only, life was never going to go back the way that it had been before. How could it? Her mother was gone, and so was her father.

He wasn't dead of course, he just wasn't around. She had barely seen him since her mother had died. He wasn't even the one that had broken the news to the children. Teal'c, and Sam had driven to their schools. Teal'c had driven the van while Sam had held them all unbuckled in the backseat and sobbed harder than they had.

Her father had showed up to the funeral. Cassie had been more than a little worried that he wouldn't. He'd sat between Olivia, and Will, and put his hand around their shoulders.

He hadn't cried. He'd just looked angry.

She figured after that he'd come home. He knew that everyone was leaving, that they'd all be alone, but he didn't come home.

So it was left to her.

Maybe this was the way the universe worked. You could get love, when you needed it most, but whatever you took, was something that you were going to have to pay back in the end. It was more of a loan than a gift.

If you were an orphan taken in by people who were no blood relation, maybe it meant that one day you would be called on to do the same thing for someone else.

Some days, Cassie resented the idea of taking care of her siblings, even for a day, let alone forever. She thinks about how young they are, and how young she is. She's only eighteen, and she still trudges off to high school after dropping the younger ones off at day cares and schools all over town. She wanted to go to college. She wanted to get married before becoming a mother. When she thinks about these things she gets furious.

Other times, she accepts it. She doesn't know what she wants to do with her life. She had plans to go to college, but if she's really honest with herself, college is a waste of money until she figures out what she wants to be.

It's an American idea anyway, this college, and she's not American. In her culture, she'd be married by now. It was rare for marriages to happen much after someone turned seventeen, unless of course it was a second marriage. She'd be a mother on her world, so why was it so strange that she as becoming one on this one?

Cassie had given up on any ideas of becoming a mother a few years back. She carried within her a disease, one that she would pass on to any children. One which would kill her children if they weren't treated by Nirti when they turned sixteen years old. Sure, Nirti had saved her, she had saved her like she had all the children of her village, but she hadn't saved her quite enough to keep her from passing it on to the next generation

So maybe this was meant to be, maybe this was how she got to be a mother.

Maybe raising her mother's babies is the most noble and precious way that she can carry on her mother's legacy.

Daniel, she's not going to think of him as her father anymore, isn't home again. It's getting close to the bedtime for the little ones. So she bathes the little ones, and puts them in their precious little footie pajamas. Then she reads them a bedtime story, and hugs them when they cry.

Then the four of them, eighteen year old Cassie, ten year old Olivia, three-year old Will, and 1 year old Drew crawl into their parent's bed to snuggle as they sleep.

"This how puppies sleep?" Will asks.

"Yes," Olivia says.

"Why sleep like puppies?" Willa asks.

"Because," Cassie says, and she's about to leave it just like that. It's the sort of answer that parents give, and if she's going to be a parent she might as well learn to give them. At the last minute a better answer comes to mind, "Because cuddles make you happy. Puppies are so happy, because they are always cuddling one another."

"I'm not very happy," Olivia says with a deadpan voice.

Cassie puts her arm around her little sister, and pulls her closer to herself, "That's because you're not snuggled in enough."

**The Next Afternoon**

"Who are you here for?" the day care worker asks.

"Will and Drew Jackson," she says looking over the partition to see if she can see her brothers.

"Two of them huh? I can barely handle one little rug rat myself. You look really young to have two children," a man in his early twenties next to Cassie says.

"Oh, they are so not mine! I'm way too young! I'm there sister, and actually I take care of three, we've got a ten year old sister," she says as her brother's come out, and he gives the name of his son to the day care worker.

"You're raising three kids by yourself?" he says obviously impressed.

"Well, I am right now. Mom just…" she looks at her brothers, and decides not to finish the sentence. She would much rather be vague with a stranger than cause her brothers to start to cry. Well, Will anyway, Drew was still too young to know what was going on.

"I'm sorry," he says. "My name is James by the way."

"Thanks, I've got to pick my sister up at school," she says picking up Drew, and taking Will by the hand.

"How about a date?" he asks.

"Ah…actually, I have a boyfriend," Cassie mutters a bit confused.

"I'm sorry, that came out wrong. I meant to say play date, for the kids. My Hunter is right between the ages of the boys, it might be fun for them."

Right, Cassie thinks to herself, she ought to be planning things like this. Ever since her mother had died it had been nothing but survival, but life was about a whole lot more than survival. She had to do more than just keep the kids alive, she had to make sure that they went back to living.

"That would be great," she says.

"Can I have your number to set it up?" he asks.

"Yeah, you have something to write on?" she asks.

He pulls out a piece of paper and a pen that were suspiciously at the ready. She jots her number down, and Will waves "bye-bye," as the three of them walk out of the day care center.

**That Night**

Dominic sneaks into Cassie's window as he has so many times before. He's surprised when he finds her bed empty. He doesn't panic though. His mind is so unused to tragedy that it doesn't go there straight off the bat. He figures she probably went over to someone's house or something. Stuff like that has been happening ever since her Mom died.

He calls her cell phone, and hears it ringing in her parent's bedroom. A second later Cassie rushes out of the bedroom with her phone in her hand. She almost runs into him, and is shocked and angry.

"What are you doing here?"

"I thought I would come comfort you," he offers.

She rolls her eyes. He hasn't been around much more than her father has the last couple of days. He showed up for the funeral, and came few other times to drop off homework before she went back to school, and sit looking uncomfortable in the living room.

Between classes at school, he'd tried to resume the relationships that they'd had before all of this had happened. He'd not understood that they were standing on whole new ground. That that would be like trying to lay a beach towel down to sunbath on hot lava.

"You did not, you came here for sex."

"Sex, can be very comforting," he teases.

"Get out," she points toward the front door. She would have liked to yell, but her siblings are only sleeping a little way away from her.

"Ok, I was teasing, I just wanted to make sure you were ok."

"It's the middle of the night?"

"It's ten o'clock. We used to stay up a lot later than that."

"Do you know what time toddlers wake up?"

"Not really."

"Well, it's early, and that's what time I get up in the morning. So please, leave me alone, so I can get some sleep."

"Where is your dad?" Dominic asks concerned.

"I don't know."

"Well, shouldn't you call child protective services or something? He can't just leave the kids alone like that."

"He didn't leave them alone. He left them with me."

"Right, but like all the time?"

"Dominic, leave us alone!" she says spinning out of the room.

A moment ago she was a child, but he can already tell that he will never be going back to a moment ago.


	93. Part 8 Chapter 2

**The Next Day**

Sam makes her way into Daniel's office, because he has an artifact that she's been dying to get her hands on. He's had it for four days, and she figures that that is more than enough time to make the translation. If he hasn't done it by now, he's probably can't. What's more, he probably needs to be told that he can't. Left to his own devices Daniel will keep trying long after anyone else would have given up. He'd cracked so many uncrack able codes that nothing seemed impossible.

She thinks that the office is empty when she first turns the light on, and is wondering if it would be appropriate to take an ancient artifact and leave a note. When she sees him.

Daniel Jackson, a man with three PHD's lying on the floor of his lab.

"Daniel!" she says in surprise.

He blinks up at her.

"Did you fall asleep while you were working?" she asks.

He blinks at her, wordless, and confused. Then her eyes take in the whole picture, the way that his clothes are crumpled by more than a short nap, the smell of burnt coffee, and unbathed man.

"Daniel, when is the last time that you've been home?" she asks gently squatting on the floor next to where he is still sitting.

He shrugs his shoulders.

"The funeral? Daniel, have you been home since the funeral?" she asks.

He shakes his head.

"Oh, Daniel," she says mournfully.

He hangs his head.

"What about your children? Who has been taking care of your children?"

He can't even muster panic. There is definitely something wrong with him. He needs medical help. She'd better call Janet.

It hits her, all fresh and new, that she'll never be able to call Janet again. That sort of thing has been happening an awful lot since Janet died.

Well, she'd better call someone, and she'd better check on his kids.

**Later That Day**

As soon as Cassie gets out of her last class she checks her cell phone. She'd love to check it in class, sometimes the day care calls to say that Will has been crying or that Drew won't eat. She's afraid that one day Olivia, who has already lost four parents, is going to shatter and need someone to pick up the pieces as well.

Today, though, there is a message from Sam. She's got the boys at home, and she's going to pick up Olivia.

There is nothing to worry about, Sam says.

That only means that there is everything to worry about. Cassie has been worried about this ever since her father first dropped out of their lives. She didn't think that people would fail to notice his absence forever.

She worried about what might happened when they finally did notice. She worried that they might take her siblings from her.

Olivia had been in foster care. She'd run away from foster care. They were all too old to be adopted, even little Drew wasn't really a baby anymore.

And what about Cassie? If her siblings were pulled away from her now she would have no family left. She was eighteen, and she would have no place to live until she graduated from high school. There would be no place to go for Thanksgiving and Christmas. There would never, ever, be anyone that she could call "hers".

No, she was going to keep this family together any way that she could.

She rushes home so fast that she beats them. She pulls some much neglected Shakespeare out of her backpack to study. Not that it really matters. She's close enough to the end of her schooling, and was a good enough student that the only way she's not going to graduate is if she really screws up, and college is out of the question for reasons completely different than grades.

Sam comes in, and pulls some pre-cut vegetables out of the fridge. This immediately makes Cassie feel like a crappy mother surrogate. She should prepare after school snacks like those out of a magazine or a 1950's TV show as well.

"Cassie, can I talk to you in the other room?" Sam asks softly.

Cassie nods, and shuffles after her into the living room.

"Honey, why didn't you tell me it was this bad? You could have called us! Any of us! We would have helped you!"

"I didn't know it was bad," Cassie mutters.

"Honey, you're dad needs help, he should have been there for you guys."

"I was taking care of them," Cassie says squaring her shoulders.

"You're a kid."

"I'll get custody of them if I have to. I'll fight you for them," Cassie says suddenly. She isn't even sure where the words are coming from, but they're spilling out of her mouth.

"Custody? Cass, it's not going to come to that. Your dad is getting help. Catherine is flying tomorrow on the two o'clock flight. She's going to be staying at least two weeks, longer if you need it. I'm going to be staying with you until she arrives. We're just going to make sure that you're taken care of until your dad gets better. We had no idea that he was…wasn't home, and not showering or eating or…functioning."

Cassie's heart clenched. She hadn't really thought about where her father was. She'd been much too busy being angry at him to worry about him. "You said he's getting help, so he's like in a mental hospital?"

"He is for now. He's on some depression medicine, and in therapy," Sam says softly, "You didn't know what was going on with him?"

Cassie shakes his head, "No, I just…he wasn't here."

"Honey, you needed to call us. He could have hurt himself, and we never would have known to look for him, to try to save him."

Cassie is struck with cold terror when she thinks about her father being dead, gone forever like her mom, "He's suicidal?"

"I don't know, he would barely talk to me," Sam says.

Cassie starts to cry, and Sam folds her into her arms, "It's ok, honey it's ok."

**A Week Later**

Cassie accepts Catherine's arrival the way a new mother accepts a grandmother coming after a birth. It was desperately needed childcare, and a parenting boot camp all wrapped into one. Not that Catherine had ever been a mother, but she had more experience with children than Cassie did herself. Catherine was useless with household chores though, having grown up around servants.

Dominic seemed relieved by Catherine's arrival. He started coming around again, and he and Cassie them tried to resume the easy light-hearted teenage romance they had had before Janet's death.

Dominic thought that they had resumed it.

To Cassie it was empty and shallow. She had become an adult. Grief can often do that without any additional responsibilities when you reach a certain age, and Cassie had the added complexities of bills and laundry and bath time to her list.

Dominic was a child. Dating him to her, suddenly seemed as perverse as if she started dating one of Olivia's friends. It was wrong somehow, and perverted. Sex, an even kissing, were not options for her. He said he understood, that it was grief.

She wanted to break up with him, but she didn't want to hurt him. Like an adult would want to protect a child from heartbreak over her first crush.

Like her father, back when he was a father, had tried to protect Olivia form being crushed by her crush on Tyler.

She didn't tell anyone about all the thoughts that she kept on the inside, about her ideas for the future. She didn't tell anyone that she'd never actually sent those college applications. She kept quiet about the job interviews she slipped away to during her lunch hour.

Maybe she would be a secretary at the family friendly accounting firm down town.

Maybe she would work in the mail room of the lawyers, after all, they had a day care right on site.

Maybe she would take the job working as a para at Olivia's school.

No matter what, her kiddos would be well looked after, of this she was sure.

**Four Days Later**

Daniel returns to their home with much fanfare. The little boys don't do anything all day but hang off of them. Even Olivia has a pretty bad case of hero worship. It's like he's come back from the dead, and after all the loss that she's suffered she could use an occasional resurrection.

He doesn't talk much, but he makes eye contact, and he listens, which is somehow more than Cassie expected.

How could you check out so completely? How could you leave your family alone, and then come back and start to act as if nothing at all was wrong?

After their bathes the boys pile into his bed.

"I'm sorry, we got into the habit of doing this when you were gone," Cassie says apologetically hauling Drew up.

Daniel shakes his head, "No, that's right, remember, Livvy Lou? When you came to say with us? You slept in our bed for a while."

Olivia nods.

"And you stayed with your mom too when you first were adopted," Daniel says turning to his older daughter.

She is not about to be won over that easily.

"I wish someone had been there to do that for me when my parents died."

"So do I." Cassie says.

His eyes are wounded, but he doesn't say anything.

Cassie thinks about sleeping in her own bed, but if she's honest she needs her siblings as much as they need her, and so she takes her usual place between the boys. They are already asleep, and Olivia is not far behind. She sleeps a lot now days. It's a sign of depression, and it's got Cassie worried.

Daniel isn't asleep, and neither is Cassie.

"Have you ever been unable to do something, no matter how much you wanted to?" he asks into the darkness.

"Yeah, solve quadratic equations, not love my family," she whispers as she gets up to leave the room.

"Have you ever wanted to get off the floor, to shower, to move, and just not been able to manage it?" he presses as he follows her.

"Don't give me that crap. I lost my mother, and I still got off my butt every day, and did what needed to be done."

"Cassie, I have been losing people my whole life. I have lost everyone…."

"You didn't lose us. You checked out on us, Daniel."

He stiffens at the word. She hasn't called him that in a long time. It took him a long time to earn the title of "Dad" he hopes that he doesn't have to earn it all from scratch again.

"I'm sorry, but she was gone…" he mutters.

"I've lost as much as you have. So has Olivia. We're still parts of this family. Do you even understand what you've done to us? What I've had to give up?"

"Catherine was here," he says confused. Catherine was leaving the next day, and when he'd seen her upon his arrival he'd naturally assumed that she'd been here ever since the funeral.

"Not always, and that's not the point. Catherine isn't family. Well, at least she isn't immediate, live here all the time, wipe snot from a baby's nose, I'd be happy to take your chewed gum kind of family.

"I'm here now," he says softly.

"Fat lot of good that does us. Do you think I will ever be able to trust you again? You left, when we needed you most."

"You're going to have to trust me when you go to college."

Cassie's facial expression is strictly involuntary, but it gives away everything.

"Cassie, you sent the applications out, right?"  
"There is something noble in motherhood," she whispers.

"I agree, but not when you're unmarried and eighteen."

"It's not as if it's literal motherhood. I'm not pregnant," she says thinking that he misunderstood.

"Well, thank heavens for that, but it doesn't matter how you enter into parenthood. It's hard work, and you're too young for it. I'm here now. I know that I was gone for a while. I can even understand if you cannot forgive me for that. But I'm back, and I'm not going anywhere now, and I'm going to raise my children."

Tears run down Cassie's face. "I told you that my parents were divorced. What I didn't tell you was that my father never really saw me after the divorce. He promised that he was going to come visit me. He swore, but he never did. Not once."

"I'm not your father," Daniel says lightly touching her face.

"No, you're not," she says with a sad laugh, "Now, you're just some guy that an amazing women fell in love with, long ago, before she died."

"You're going to school," he says firmly.

"I'm finishing high school," she agrees.

"You're going to college."

"Eighteen, remember? That means I get to make my own choices," she says spinning out of the room, and going to her own bedroom. Right now she needs to be alone as desperately as she needed to be together not long ago.


	94. Part 8 Chapter 3

**A Week Later**

"Hey, how is it going?" a voice behind Cassie asks as she picks up her brothers from day care.

Cassie turns, and realizes that she is about to have a very awkward conversation. It's the man who asked her to call for a play date weeks ago. She just hasn't quite got past the purely survival stage, and not even with Catherine was here, not after her father came back.

"Don't worry, I got the hint when you didn't call. I was just looking for someone to make conversation with while I waited to pick up the kids. I know now that it's not going to be anything more than that."

"I wasn't trying to make a hint or anything. I've just been really busy," she says.

"Please, don't make excuses. I get it. You're a kid. I'm an adult. You've got a kid that you're dating. You're worried he would get all jealous if we hung out together. You don't want to mess up this thing with your little boyfriend; it is completely understandable."

"I'm not a kid."

"I used to think that when I was your age, too; in another half decade you'll feel differently about the matter."

"The guy that I am dating_ is _really immature, though. That's why I'm going to break up with him before too long."

"Really?" the man asks, looking surprised.

"Yeah, he just… doesn't understand grief. I mean, you don't, either. So in a way, I'm older than you," Cassie says, taking a step forward with the line.

"I've suffered grief," he says.

She looks at him in surprise.

"I'm a single dad. My wife died last year."

"I'm so sorry," Cassie says with a sharp and surprised intake of breath. "Do you mind telling me how it happened?"

"She was in the Air Force. Doing something crazy up at Cheyanne Mountain. I never even got a real answer as to how she died. 'In the line of duty' was all they would tell me. What do they mean, 'line of duty'? I mean, that's got to be oversees stuff, in a war zone, right? She was gone sometimes, for a day, but not often. Besides, how far away could she get in a day? There is something weird going on in the mountain."

"That's how my mom died, too."

"Did they tell you anything?" he asks desperately, "Do you know what they do in that mountain?"

She looks away, and shakes her head saying softly, "My mom was a doctor."

"Doctors and airmen, both dying, why?" he ponders softly.

Cassie is relieved when she steps up to the window that second, and requests her brothers. She glances at the man beside her, and realizes that he's about to continue this conversation. She needs a quick distraction.

"James, how about we get the kids together on Saturday at the park?" she asks.

"That works for me," he says with a surprised grin.

"Noon-thirty, then? Right after lunch?" she asks.

"Can we do two instead? That way it wouldn't conflict with my Jaden's nap."

"Ok, I'll see you then," she says, after specifying which park, and scoping her youngest brother off the floor.

**Two Days Later**

"Where did you say you were going?" Daniel asks, more than a little confused.

"We're just going to the park," Cassie says, trying to shrug as if it's no big deal. The effect is completely unconvincing though.

"If you're just going to the park, why are you rushing so you're going to be there at a certain time?" her father asks.

"I just promised the kids that we'd be to the park by two," she says, and the younger boys bounce up and down saying "park, park" in such a convincing way that most of Daniel's doubts disappear.

"Ok, I'll grab my coat and come along," he says, heading to the closet.

"What? No." Cassie says.

Daniel blinks at her in surprise. "You're still mad at me for the time I didn't spend with my children. I'm trying to spend time with my children. Why are you objecting?"

"Look, you've got the afternoon off child care. You don't have do anything with them all afternoon."

"I want to spend time with my kids, though," he says thinking that is going to settle the matter.

She gets a strange look on her face.

"I see, you're meeting Dominic. I should have known, because I haven't seen him around much lately. I can take the kids the park, and you can go spend time with him," Daniel offers cheerfully.

"Not Dominic," Will says, pulling on his father's sleeve and shaking his head. "James."

"James? Who is James? Did you and Dominic break up?" he asks with concern. He wouldn't want his daughter to have to deal with another loss right now.

"James and I are just friends," she says.

"Ok, and where did you meet him?" Daniel asks.

"Day care," Will offers helpfully; or, from his sister's point of view, unhelpfully.

"Oh, is he a worker there?" Daniel asks casually.

"No, he's a Daddy," Will protests.

"He's a father of a kid in daycare? How old is this friend of yours?"

"Its fine, Daniel," she grumbles.

"So he's old, now I'm really hoping that you were tell the truth about this guy just being a friend. Willie, how old is James' son?"

Will holds up his hand to indicate the child's height. It's not an exact answer of course, but it does the trick.

"I'm definitely going to go along," Daniel says decidedly as he puts an arm into his coat.

"Daniel!" Cassie protests with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.

"Well, if he's just a friend, what harm is there in my coming?" Daniel asks quite pointedly.

"I don't like you hanging out when my girlfriends come over to chat, either. Besides, I'm going to have a lot of little chaperones. Especially one who likes to tattle on his big sister," she says, giving Will a playful poke in the ribs.

"I would still be willing to come," Daniel says.

"We're fine," Cassie says, kneeling down to help Drew put on his coat.

-0-0-0-

Cassie can't remember the last time that she laughed this hard. James told so many funny stories about his son. The same sorts of things had happened to Cassie since she started taking care of her siblings, she just didn't know that you were allowed to laugh at them.

"Don't eat the dirt, Jayden!" James calls out to his son.

The little boy nods his head gravely, and then begins to stick a caterpillar in his mouth.

"Don't eat that either! If it isn't food, don't eat it!" James proclaims.

The boy sits the caterpillar down, and then picks up a rock, "Food?" he queries.

James and Cassie both burst into laughter, and the boy begins to move the rock to his mouth.

"Come here, munchkin; are you hungry?" Cassie asks, pulling a pack of fruit snacks out of the backpack-turned-diaper bag that she carries with her at all times.

"Ah, she comes prepared."

"You've got to be prepared with little ones. They always want something to eat or drink, except, you know, at actual meal times."

"Isn't that the truth?" James says with a sigh. "You spend all the time to make a home cooked meal for them, and suddenly everything but the meal is interesting."

"Well, unless it's on your plate. If it's on your plate, they'll eat it. Especially if you tell them not to. More especially if their hands are grubby."

"That's a trick I'll have to try. I can't get this little one to eat. His mother was always so good at that," James says wistfully.

Jayden finishes a few fruit snacks, and then wonders off.

Cassie holds out the remainder to James, who pops a few in his mouth. She puts the rest in her own. It's an intimate action, three people sharing food out of a single hand.

"So… you're looking pretty good for someone who just broke up with her boyfriend," James says cautiously.

"We didn't actually break up."

"Yet?"

"I don't, know it's complicated."

"Not really, do you love him?"

"Dominic is a great guy."

"Just not the right guy for you."

"He used to be."

"What changed?"

She sighs, "I grew up, and he didn't. I keep thinking, 'Maybe he will grow up. Maybe I won't have to break his heart'."

James sits in silence for a while before he almost whispers, "Does he make you happy?"

Cassie stares into the distance past her siblings' playing forms for a few seconds, before she says, "Who decided that was the measure of a life? There are so many other questions you could ask. Does he make me a better person? Does he treat me right? Does he let me be me?"

"Does he make you happy?" James asks again.

"It's not like he makes me sad," she says.

James leans back against the bench, putting just a bit of extra distance between Cassie and himself. "You know what I think, Cass? I think life is tough enough already. It's full of things like work and death and people who don't give a damn about each other. It's not fair or equal or nice. So when you find something in life that makes you smile, I think you cling to it, you gather those things together like precious gems. You keep gathering that stuff all up, until there is no room for anything else, not even for things like grief or pain or guilt."

Cassie looks at Olivia, swinging upside-down from the monkey bars.

"Cassie, you're one of my smiles."

She turns to look at him, "You actually want to be more than friends, don't you?"

"I know I'm old for you. I know you've got a boyfriend. So if I can only have you as a friend, I'm ok with that."

"I'm eighteen, and maybe… give me some time with the boyfriend problem," she says.

**The Next Day**

Dominic doesn't know quite what to say to Cassie. He never really knew what to say to someone who has lost someone. He used up the few things he did know were right on the first couple days after her mom's death.

Now he just talks about school or TV or anything to fill the silence.

They sit in her backyard after dark. She tucked all of her siblings in before they came out here. They are all back to their own beds, unless there is a bad dream or some little thing prompts a memory of their mother.

Cassie sits there, and takes his hand.

He stops talking, it's the first time romantic physical contact that they've had since her mother died. He squeezes her hand.

"When I was twelve, I went to this week long camp. It was the most fun I'd ever had. All year I thought about going back, and seeing all my friends again. I went the next year, and was miserable. I kept trying to figure out what had changed. It was the same cabin, the same counselors, the same songs, and crafts, and the same canoe. See, it wasn't the camp that had changed, it was me."

Dominic nods his head. He can feel that there is some sort of a metaphor in there, but he can't quite grasp it.

"Dominic, I love you."

"I love you, too," he says cheerfully. Now they are back to something that he understands.

"I've just outgrown you."

He bristles, "So, I'm summer camp, then? I'm some fun adventure that you outgrow."

"I didn't mean it like that. I just meant… we've both outgrown each other."

"What did I do wrong? I don't know what to do in this situation, it's true, but you can show me, teach me, train me. I can be what you want me to be."

She shakes her head, "Dominic, you're going away to college soon…"

"So are you."

She shakes her head.

"What? Of course you are! You've got amazing grades."

"I have three kids to raise."

"No, your dad has three kids to raise."

"That's the point, Dom, you don't understand. I have to take care of them! That changes everything."

"Your dad was sick for, like, a week, and you had to watch your younger siblings. Don't be such a freaking martyr about it."

"Are you kidding me? Sick? That's what you're going to call it? No, just no," she says, walking away. She hadn't pictured this as an angry break up, but maybe all break-ups are.

"Oh, come on, Cassie, he's back now. It's nothing to give up your future over! It's nothing to give up us over," he calls after her.

She turns, just before the door, and faces him, "You know what, Dominic. Maybe it's not even that. Maybe it's not that I have to lead this whole other life, and you're not ready for it. Maybe it's that you weren't willing to lead it with me. Maybe, even if I don't raise them, I needed you to be willing to raise them with me. Maybe, even if I end up going to college, you needed to be alright with me not going to college. Maybe, I needed you to lay next to me and hold me on the nights where I was alone."

"You were never alone, you were sleeping with a dog pile with all of the kids."

"Exactly, because they were for there for me when I needed them."

It's only when she gets into the house that she begins to sob.

He'd made her happy once. She'd loved him once. The fact that both sentences were in the past tense was reason enough to cry.


	95. Part 8 Chapter 4

**The Next Night**

Cassie knows it's really too late to be going over to his house. Good girls just don't call up boys at nine o'clock at night out of the blue. She's probably past the point that most people would think it's a booty call. But hey, it's James, and he's going to understand that she had to wait until the kids were in bed. She doesn't mind leaving them with her father when she knows that all of them are probably going to be asleep.

"Hi," he says when he opens the door.

"I'm sorry to come over so late," she says.

"No problem, do you want a beer?"

Cassie freezes, thinking that maybe this whole thing was a mistake, "You know I'm only eighteen, right?"

"If you're old enough to raise kids, you're old enough to drink in my book," he says.

"Ok," she says, following him into his kitchen. He pops open a beer for each of them, and gives one to her.

"I broke up with Dominic."

James's eyes soften, "Are you ok?"

Cassie nods her head, "Yeah, you were right, it needed to be done."

"That doesn't make it easy," he says, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

He understands even that, the difficulty of her doing what she told her to do.

"So, what are we Cassie? Are we friends or more?" he asks.

He turns to her, and kisses her. It's the longest, most effective kiss of her life. Dominic never kissed her with that much skill, although to the boy's benefit, he might have had a bit more passion. She's almost weak at the knees from just the actions of his tongue. Already her mind is wondering to other uses for the agile tongue of his.

Lord, they've only kissed, and it's already better than some of the sex that she and Dominic had.

"Wow," she mutters.

He grins. He knows he's a freaking good kisser. That should take away some of the appeal for her, but if she's honest with herself, it doesn't.

He starts to kiss her again, and somehow, both of their beers get set down, and she's up against the wall in his hallway. His hand is between her legs, and she is rocketing toward climax faster than she ever dreamed she could be.

"Stop!" she whispers.

For a second, just a second, there is a gleam of something that scares the wits out of her. His hand makes two more motions before it stills, just like he's telling her, "I don't have to listen, but I will."

"What if Jaden came out here?" she whispers, because she really doesn't want to stop completely. At this point she's not even sure that her body would endure her stopping completely.

"He's in bed."

"I know… I would feel a lot more comfortable if we went into your bedroom, and locked the door."

"It's more exciting this way," James says in a voice that sounds a bit toddler. Maybe he isn't quite as grown up as she thought he was.

"Maybe I should just go home," she hedges. She doesn't like to throw her weight around, but that looks like it's the only way that she's going to get what she wants.

He scoops her up, and carries her to the bedroom wither her legs wrapped around him. Once inside of his bedroom, she finds out that kissing is the thing that her new lover is the worst at.

Dominic was childish in more ways than one.

She's got a real man now.

**The Next Morning**

Daniel makes excuses for his eldest while he got the rest of the children ready for the day. He said that she stayed over at a friend's house. He's not sure if Olivia is buying into it, but at least the boys are fooled.

The whole time, he is panicking inside. He knew that Cassie was having sex, but she'd never stayed out all night before. Maybe this new man… had hurt her (if that's even where she was). Maybe she had gone somewhere and been hurt. Maybe she'd gotten into a car crash trying to drive somewhere. Maybe someone had stolen her out of her bedroom window.

He drops the boys off at day care, and Olivia off at school. Then he debates whether he should call her school, and excuse her. He decides against it, because he doesn't actually know that she's not there. Besides, it would make him look silly, or guilty, if something was really wrong.

He calls the house a dozen of times through the day, and wishes that Cassie had taken the family's cell phone with her when she went wherever she was.*

He can't focus on anything all day. What has happened to his baby girl?

He leaves work early to make sure Olivia gets picked up from school on time, but when he gets there, Cassie is already sitting there in her car. He wants to go up to her, and shout, but that's not the sort of thing that you do in front of classes of middle schoolers. It's not even the sort of thing that you do in front of your middle school daughter.

So he waits. He waits through an entire night of life in a family.

Then, when the kids are all in bed, he walks into her room.

"Where were you?" he asks, in a voice that sounds far calmer than he feels.

"At school."

"I mean, where were you all night?"

"Out," Cassie says, pushing past him in an attempt to get to her room.

"'Out'? What do you mean 'out'? Out where?"

"I'm an adult; I was out."

"You were out with James, weren't you?" Daniel asks.

Cassie can't hold back a grin, and the grin gives her away.

"You're cheating on Dominic?" her father asks in anger and disappointment.

"No, I wouldn't cheat on him. We broke up."

"I'm sorry," Daniel says, this confession taking quite a bit of the wind out of his sails, "But you can't just sleep with someone you hardly know."

She rolls her eyes, "I know him."

"You went on, what, one date? And then you spend the night with him."

"Mom wouldn't have cared."

"Your mother was fine with you having sex in the context of a committed long term relationship. That doesn't mean that she would be fine with this."

"Well, we can't really ask her, can we? What with her being dead?" Cassie says spitefully.

They stare at each other for a few seconds, "You're not staying out all night anymore."

"You can't control me," she says back.

He sighs, it's a deep one, coming up from his soul, "Cassie, you're still my daughter. You're still in high school. You're still living in my house, and you are not going to spend the night at the house of some man who has got a decade on you."

He has the trump card in there. It's so buried amongst the other rhetoric that it's possible that he doesn't even know he has it.

The truth is she does need a place to live, at least until she graduates from college and becomes more self-sufficient. If she moved out of her house, it would mean leaving her siblings all alone, and she's pretty sure that she couldn't do that to them.

**Two Months Later**

Daniel doesn't approve of her boyfriend. That is just a fact that Cassie has come to live with, as plain and simple as the color of her hair or the street that she lives in.

This particular fact is a bit inconvenient at times, to be sure. It means that she has to sneak around and see him behind his back, but it's not like it's that hard to do.

When Daniel's on a mission, Cassie invites her boyfriend and his son over to her house. She bribes her siblings with candies or cookies to keep them from telling on her. Well, mostly she bribes blabbermouth Will. Drew is too young to really tell, and Olivia is too afraid of the conflict that it would cause to utter a peep.

When Daniel is home from a mission for too long, so long that Cassie think she is going to die if she doesn't see him, she'll leave school during her lunch break to have a romantic meeting at his house, or office, or just have lunch at some nice restaurant.

She loves how grown-up she feels when she is with him. Actually, she loves how grown-ups she feels all the time. She is only a month away from graduation. Her classmates' thoughts have turned to partying and college.

She's daydreaming about how nice it would be if her boyfriend and his son lived with her full-time, and the internship at an accounting firm that just might turn into a full-time gig come summer.

Sometimes, she even thinks about marriage, although she knows that James' mind is probably nowhere near there right now.

They're young, they can take a few years to decide.

**One Month Later**

Cassie is the first of "SG-1's babies", as Jacob Carter dubbed them, to graduate. Everyone rushes to start "traditions". It's mostly the ones that are all huddled together in age that come up with them, her sister being the ring leader. Everyone participates, even Rya'c, whom she calls a trader. She vows to get him back when it's his turn a couple of years down the road.

It starts, apparently, with all of the younger children dragging her out of bed at three in the morning for breakfast. No, this is not breakfast in her own kitchen, because that would not be humiliating enough, this is breakfast at IHOP.

No, she's not allowed to put on clothes. Yes, they did borrow Teal'c's bunny slippers. Yes, she does have to wear them. Oh, great, Jack has a matching hat.

There is also a wand.

There are also magic words, pronounced by Drew in a language all his own, and which seems to consist chiefly of spit bubbles.

The strange part is, Cassie loves every minute of it.

Her graduation day continues with toasts over coffee and orange juice, and kiddy meal for the graduate. The return to her house, and let her get a few more hours of "beauty sleep before the big day", as Ty proclaims it.

Then they all start preparing for her party. It's overkill. It's a lot of overkill. The whole house and yard are covered with decorations, and there is enough food around to feed an entire universe. The house is full of laughter, jokes, and hope.

For the first time since her mother died, Cassie realizes that she's disappointing them, not just her siblings, but all of them, her huge extended family. They all want her to grow up to be successful, and she chose another path, and that isn't exactly fair to them.

***Remember that this story is set when the show aired; in other words, more than a decade ago. Back then, it was uncommon for teenagers to have their own cell phones.**


	96. Part 8 Chapter 5

**3 Months Later**

It was kind of a crappy day for Cassie, overall. When she'd checked her e-mail this morning, there had been three separate e-mails from girls she'd gone to high school with. All of them were proclaiming how awesome orientation week was and how much they were going to rock college.

Then Cassie had screwed up some filing at work, and gotten yelled at. Jeez, here she was, doing a minimum wage job, and she couldn't even get that right. So much for rocketing up the corporate ladder so quickly that she would never regret not having gone to college.

Then on her lunch break, one of the other secretaries had snubbed her, and she had no idea why. She'd thought that high school girls were catty, but girls in an office were way worse. Did any of them get the concept of "grow-up"? Like, at all?

Then she'd sat through the most boring and pointless meeting for three hours in the afternoon. The worse part of it was, she couldn't even lose focus like the rest of them, because she was the one typing up the minutes.

She decides to stop by James' house on the way home from work. She knows that she probably shouldn't. He told her that he was going to be really busy for the next couple of weeks, and wouldn't be able to see her, but after the day she was having, she could really use some lovin' to clear her head.

She knocks on the door.

There is no answer, so she pulls up the key under the mat. It's probably a little too personal. It's not like he gave her a key. It's not like he even purposely showed her were this one was. Just once when they'd gotten tipsy on a night out on the town (she'd been drinking with a fake ID he'd gotten for her) he'd been too drunk to find his keys (they had of course taken a taxi home, they never drove drunk). He fumbled for the key under the mat to let them in his house.

It wasn't like they were wild like that all the time, only when James was at his grandmother's.

Anyway, she was probably overstepping her bounds a little by letting herself into his house, but right now, she didn't care.

As soon as the door is open, she hears a sound that makes her freeze in the hallway. It's a sound that she's familiar with, very familiar with. When that sound is being made, she is usually a lot closer to it.

Who the hell was James cheating on her with? She freezes wondering if she should just let herself out the door, but then she gets mad. Really, really mad, and she marches into his bedroom, and flings the door open.

"What the hell?" a feminine voice asks.

"Cassie?" James asks sounding very much like a rat caught in a trap.

"You know her?" the women asks pulling away from James, and covering herself with sheets up to her chin.

"Just… our kids hang out together," James stammers.

"Our kids hang out together? Really? First of all, they aren't my kids. They're my brothers, and second of all, we hang out together too. You stay at my house so often you could just about say we're living together," Cassie says with her arms crossed in defiance.

"Living together? What the hell are you doing with our son when you're over at this child's house?" the woman says, glaring at James.

"She's legal age, and Jaden's fine," James protests.

"Your son?_ Your _son, as in_ both _of yours. As in you plus him made a baby?" Cassie says to the women before her, "You told me your wife was dead," she says to James.

"You killed me in your little fantasy?" the woman says, getting out of bed with a sheet covering her. She begins to pick clothes off the ground and dress herself all behind the sheet. Cassie is impressed by the talent, and thinks that she wants to acquire it. Not that she's planning on having a whole lot of times in her life where she's going to have to get dressed without someone seeing.

"It's not like that. I just thought a story of a dead wife would give me an angle, and edge you know, get some info," James says.

Cassie's mouth drop open, but she can't actually process what she is hearing.

"You're still sexing up your informants for info? I thought you dropped that when we got married," the women says with less spite in her voice than Cassie would have expected.

"You have been gone for a long time," he protests.

"You marry a foreign correspondent, and you get long absences."

"I didn't marry a foreign correspondent."

"Well, I guess I shouldn't have got all successful on you then," she teases.

Cassie's stomach is falling out from under her, because the bitterness has gone out of their argument. Now, they just sound like an old married couple having a discussion; which, after all, they are.

"Don't worry," the woman continues, dropping the sheet to reveal a freaking power suit that looks more like it's fresh from the cleaners than plucked off the floor, "I cheated on you in Europe too." She walks over and kisses James lightly on the lips before giving Cassie a head to toe examination, "But my choices were far more age appropriate."

Cassie just stands there and stares at James for a long second. "Come here," he says softly, reaching out his arms.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" she screams, "I come into your house to see in you in bed with your wife, and your reaction is 'come here'?"

"Next time, you should call ahead."

"I walk in on you having sex with your wife, you admit that you were using me to try to get information for what, a story? Which means you're a journalist, which means you've been lying about what you do for a living for the past couple of months."

"That is not true! I told you that I was a professor, and I teach one journalism class at the community college."

"James, I thought we had something serious. We were sharing a bed like half the time. Your son and my brothers were… God, your son! Do you realize that I love your son? The whole time I've thought he was a half-orphan. God, does he even know his mother is alive? I mean, he heard us talking about her like she was dead. He must think…"

"Come on, he's like two; he doesn't have any idea what we are saying."

"I am just starting to realize that I didn't know you at all. Like, at all at all," Cassie says, walking out of the room.

"So, babe, are we over?"

Cassie actually sees red as she turns around. She'd always figured that was more of a metaphor than literal truth. "We are so over that I'm debating setting your bed on fire with you in it."

"Dude, I never figured you as a violent chick before. That's hot."

Cassie stomps out of the room, and sees James' wife in the living room, playing with Jaden, who apparently was home the whole time. She figured that he must have been gone. With her, James had always been careful to keep the volume low when the boy was in the house. Apparently he just knew how to play the room, and catered his behavior to the tastes of whoever he was around at the time.

"If you have any sense at all, you're going to leave him. Take that little boy, and get out right now. Hope that he's too young to remember this."

The woman laughs, and Jaden joins in. He's too young to get the 'joke', if you could even call it that. But he does understand that when someone laughs, you should too.

Cassie bends down next to him, "I love you, little man. I am so, so sorry you aren't mine."

-0-

When Cassie gets home, she is relieved to find that all of her siblings are in the backyard with her father. She takes the opportunity to slink up the stairs to her bedroom and cry herself to sleep.

-0-

Daniel makes the rounds saying goodnight to his children. Cassie didn't come home again. It's not like it happens often, but every once in a while she's still missing. He knows where she is now, and she is eighteen. He keeps trying to remind himself that if she'd gone to college like all of her classmates, she'd be gone every day now. He still hates it when she's gone.

He does what he always does when she's gone; he goes into her empty room and thinks about Cassie, and Janet, and what Janet would do if she were around now.

Of course, Cassie probably wouldn't have gone off the deep end if Janet had been around.

Except this time, Cassie's room isn't empty. It contains his teenage daughter curled up in the fetal positon on the floor. He drops to his knees beside her.

"Cassie what happened? Are you hurt?"

She shakes her head, even though the honesty of her answer obviously depends on exactly what your definition of hurt is.

"Cassie, sweetheart, tell me what's wrong," he pleads. He wants so badly to touch her, to comfort her, to make all of this go away. But things have been so bad between them lately, so toxic, that he isn't exactly sure if she'll accept that from him.

"You were right about everything, Daddy. I should have listened to you. I am just a stupid, stupid, kid," she sobs.

The word "Daddy", something she hasn't called him since Janet died, made the decision for him. He crawls down on the ground, and wraps his arms around her, "You are not stupid, honey. Tell me what happened."

"James cheated on me. No, not even that, he cheated on his wife with me. Which, apparently, she doesn't care about."

"He's married?" Daniel asks, bewildered, and not even able to process the whole of the statement his daughter had made.

"And you didn't even know I was still dating James. So now you're probably going to kick me out. Which I totally deserve for disobeying you. Only I don't have enough money to live by myself, and now I'm totally regretting the decision not to go to college. I stayed home because I thought I needed to take care of my siblings, but I don't. I mean, you're here, reading them stories and putting them to bed while I'm out sleeping with a married man. What the hell was I thinking? I thought I was a better parent than you? I have no idea what I'm doing! I'm so stupid!"

"You're not stupid, and you were there for them when I wasn't. I'll never be able to thank you enough for that. You kept this family together. I am not going to kick you out, and I knew you were still dating James."

She stops crying to look up at her father, "You did?"

He nods.

"Then how come you didn't kick me out?" she asks.

He smooths her hair down, "Because you're my daughter, and I love you. And I'm your father, and I don't stop being your father just because I don't agree with every choice you make. This is your home, Cassie. Whenever you need it. I will always be there to pick up the pieces, to catch you when you fall. Just like you did for me. That's what a family is, kiddo."

"Is it ok if I keep living here?" she asks.

"Yes, honey, of course it is."

"I wish I could still go to college. I don't want to be a secretary forever. Secretaries are mean. I want to do something where I don't have to work with people. Well, at least where I don't have to spend so much time working with people."

"It's not too late to go to college. We'll get your application in, and get it figured out."

"I don't know what I want to do with my life."

"That's ok, you'll figure it out."

Cassie turns, and makes eye contact her father, "I need you to tell me what to do with my life."

He smiles, "Honey, you're going to figure it out."

"You're better at this than I am," she says softly, "You were right about how I should have gone to college. You were right about me not dating James. You were even right about me not taking the next step with Dominic. You're better at figuring out my life than I am. Just decide how the rest of my life will go. Pick my major, my career, maybe cook up a nice arranged marriage. That's what would have happened on my planet."

"Honey, I_ am _better than you at this. But that's because I have more experience. We all suck at life when we're eighteen. You're going to mess up. A lot. But your mess ups, they're not going to define you. I try to protect you from so much, because you're my kid, and I never want to see you hurt. But the truth is, life hurts. Sha're, that was a great year, and then there was a lot of pain. Your mother, the best six years of my life, but it almost killed me when I lost her. You, you're one of the best thing that have ever happened to me, even though this last year you've almost killed me with worry. I love Olivia to bits, but her crush on Ty keeps me up at night."

Cassie giggles.

"You know he's gay, right? I mean, he has to be. She's going to get her heart broken. And Will and Drew, you know they made your mom so sick. So sick. But she wouldn't have traded them for anything. Life hurts, and I can protect you from all the pain, but only if I protect you from all the good parts too, and I won't do that."

"Are you sure?" Cassie asks.

"No, but I _will_ hold you when it hurts," he says, wiping the hair off her face the way her father, the first one, the one who left, used to.

"Thanks," she whispers.

"He was just using me to get information on the Stargate program for a stupid story."

"Did you tell him anything?" Daniel asks, concerned.

She shakes her head.

"See? Not stupid; not stupid at all," he assures her.

The next morning, they wake up on the rug in Cassie's room. Tired and crumpled, but both of them not feeling alone for the first time in a long time.


	97. Part 8 Chapter 6

**The Next Day**

Cassie happens to walk into the living room just in time to hear the tail end of a conversation that her father is having on the phone. "I just don't think it would be a very good idea to have a team night right now," he says, "Cassie is really having a tough time."

She walks in front of him with her arms crossed in front of her. Daniel looks sheepish.

"I want them to come over," she mouths.

He covers up the mouthpiece of the phone, "You're always so great about entertaining the younger kids. I just didn't want you to have to put up with that right now."

"I don't mind," she assures him.

"No, but seriously," Daniel says shaking his head.

"I could do with the distraction," she admits.

"Ok, my eldest has just informed me that team night is back on," Daniel says into the phone.

-0-

Tammy, Olivia, and Ty have all decided they are much too old to hang out with 'the little ones', and now spend team nights in some out-of-reach corner - in this case, Olivia's room - with Cassie and Ry'ac. They don't realize that the older two, on the cusp of adulthood, are taking just as much of a step down to be with them as they would be to hang out with the little kids.

"We have got to play MASHO!" Olivia exclaims.

"For sure, MASHO is the best!" Ty proclaims.

"What are you guys talking about?" Cassie asks.

"Oh, my God, you've never played MASHO? Seriously? How could you get to be that old, and never have played? Get a piece of paper," she demands.

Ty rushes to retrieve a piece of paper so quickly that he ends up finding one that is already full of fractions. He doesn't care so long as he can find a blank side. Olivia draws a huge square in it, and then turns to Cassie, and says, "Five dream guys."

"What?" Cassie asks, a little taken aback. She is not really ready to think about romantic partners right now. She's still in the 'guys are pig' stage. She's can barely tolerate being this close to her two almost-brothers, as Ty declared the SG-1 extended family's relationship to one another.

She didn't need to worry about it, because her five favorite music and movie stars pop out of the mouths around her.

"Horrible careers?" Olivia prompts after she scribbles the first responses down.

Cassie is about to list her own, but she feels like that would be a bit close to the bone for the fun that they're having now.

What follows, at least from the younger kids, is not a list of careers so much as a list of horrible things strung together with some sort of a verb at the end. Cassie's favorite was "bugger, snot, bodily fluid, poop classifier".

Even though Cassie has long thought herself too sophisticated for bathroom humor, she can't help but giggle.

Then comes a more serious one, "Good careers".

Silence, and all eyes on her.

She tries to come up with something, but all the words choke in her throat.

"Video game tester," Ty offers. It's not so much something he's interested in himself, but it is something all the boys he goes to school with are interested in. He feels like it's the correct response.

"Vet," Olivia pipes up with the correct response for girls.

"Teacher," Rya'c suggests his own career path.

"Secretary," Oliva says with certainly.

Cassie shakes her head, and Olivia rubs the word out with the back of her pencil, replacing it with a fruity sixth grade girl career choice. Afterwards there are lists of animals and cars and locations to consider, and several different numbers with wide-flinging ranges. Then Cassie has to close her eyes, and say "when" as Olivia draws a swirl inside of the box.

Then Olivia does some fancy counting to "reveal" Cassie's fate as she proclaims in an overdramatic swami voice.

Apparently Cassie is going to live in an Outhouse (the "O" in MASHO) on Mars with her 37 children. She's going to be a doctor who makes $12 a year. She's going to use a turtle for transportation, and have a pet mastodon (actually, all the "Pets" were extinct. Extinct animals were automatically funnier to middle schoolers). Her husband, whose career was "sewer rat" was The Backstreet Boys. Apparently, not a member of the Backstreet boys, but the whole band.

When the giggles from this dies down Ty proclaims, "Ok, it's my turn."

"Alright, little man, choose five girls," Olivia says at the same time that Ty reaches out to take the paper from her. Apparently, his version of it being his turn was that it was his turn to scribe.

"I can't play, I'm a boy," he says in horror.

"Right, that's why you're naming girls instead of boys. Let's not go celebrity this time either. It's got to be people from our grade at school."

Ty's eyes turn wide with horror, and he flees the room.

"Nice going, dork," Cassie says to her sister as she runs out of the room after him. She starts to follow the kid, but when she sees him disappear into her room across the hall, she decides she might actually need to tag team with an adult on this one.

"What did I do?" Olivia asks from her spot on the bed.

Cassie was kind of hoping to catch sight of Sam first. After all, this seemed like it might be a bit of a mother issue. It's Jack she runs into first, though, and he's between conversations. Walking by him now would seem rude.

"Hey, I just wanted to tell you that, ah, your son is a little upset. It's kind of a boy-girl issue, or not a boy-girl issue, maybe?" she stammers.

"Oh," Jack flinches, "And how exactly did this come up?"

"We were playing a game, and…"

"A game? What were you doing, spin the bottle?" Jack asks in horror.

"Gross! They're kids! No, this stupid MASHO game. It's supposed to predict your future or whatever. Anyway, he was supposed to name five girls he liked, and he sorta freaked."

Jack lets out a big sigh, "Where is he?"

"He went into my room," Cassie explains.

"Thanks, I like having you watching out for my kids," Jack says, touching her lightly on the shoulder as he mounts the stairs at something which closely resembles a full-on run.

He finds his son in the teenager's bedroom, jammed into the corner between her dresser and the wall. Jack sits down, and leans against another wall in silence.

"I don't want to talk about it," Ty says crossing his arms.

"Ok," Jack says, fishing a yoyo out of his pocket and offering it to his son.

Ty glares at him.

"Son, I love you."

"But?"

"No but."

Ty heaves a huge sigh. "We were playing a stupid game. It doesn't predict the future, and most of the things you write down aren't even real things that could happen. No-one has a platypus as a pet."

"I'm sure somewhere in the world…." Jack begins, but is cut off by a glare from his son. "You're right, it's a stupid game. There are thousands of reasons why you might not want to play. I'd be ok with any of them."

"I've always written before. You know, girls played the game, and I wrote down what they said. It was just weird to do it from a different angle," Ty says, nodding his head.

"Ok, maybe that's it. Or maybe it's just weird for you to be listing girls instead of boys."

Ty's head jerks toward his father's in shock and dismay, "I'm not gay," he says quickly.

"Ok," Jack says, nodding his head. Then there is a pause of about a beat before Jack says, "I just think it's important that you know your family would be fine if you were."

"You would be?" Ty says in shock.

"Of course. I love however my kids turn out," he says.

"Oh," Ty says after a few second pause, "It's just you're all macho and military, and…" he trails off with a shrug in his shoulders and his voice.

"And I really love my kids," Jack finishes.

"Well, I don't really like MASHO anyway," Ty declares.

"That's fine," Jack says with a slight grin at the firmness of his speech.

"I much prefer Love Hate Friendship Marriage," the child says.

"Oh?" Jack asks.

"'Cause Love Hate Friendship Marriage says I'm going to marry Jordan Morgenstern every single time."

Drat those gender-ambiguous names! Jack thinks. "Oh… so tell me about Jordan…" Jack says, hoping his son doesn't think this is prying. Jack is just dying to know. He's know there is a good chance that his son was going to be gay almost since he knew that he had a son. He really is fine with it, as he told Sam all those years ago, and as he is telling his son now. He just wants to know, like you would want to know the color of eyes your new baby might have.

"He's on my hockey team, and I know there is no chance he's gay, but…" Ty ends in a contented sigh.

Jack smiles. "My son's first crush!"

"You're not going to tell anyone that I'm gay, are you?" Ty seems concerned.

"I would really love to tell your mother. I can promise you that she is going to be just as cool with it as I am."

Ty considers this for a minute before he nods, "Ok, but no one else."

"Agreed," Jack says. Then he considers the kid before him, "You know it might not be a bad decision to wait until you're a little bit older to come out. Middle school kids are meaner than most. I just don't want you to be ashamed of who you are. You're hiding because there is something wrong with the world, not because there is something wrong with you. I just want that to be perfectly clear."

Ty starts to cry a little, and tries to hide it. He didn't want to cry during this discussion. He wanted to prove that he was just as buff and strong as any other boy. Jack scoots across the floor that separates them, and pulls his son in for a noogy. This causes the tears to turn for laughter. The noogy lapses into a hug. "I love you, son," he mutters.

"I love you, too, dad," Ty says warmly. A few seconds later he shifts away, "I wish I hadn't acted like such a freak in front of everyone, especially Olivia; she's my best friend. I mean, I just ran out of the room in the middle of a game? How am I ever going to go back there? Especially if I'm not going to tell them all?"

"You bring a board game."

"What?" Ty says staring at his father incredulously.

"You heard me, you walk in there with a board game in your hands, and your head held high. You don't mention anything about it. They won't either. They're your friends, Ty. It's no big deal."

"You think?" Ty asks self-consciously.

"Sometimes, when your mom isn't around to do it for me," Jack teases.


	98. End Part 8

**Spoilers for "Prometheus Unbound"**

**The Next Night**

Jack walks in to where his wife is reading in bed.

"So I've got some news," Jack says, sitting next to his wife, "Our son is gay."

"How exactly is the news, dear?" she asks, looking over the top of the book at Jack.

"No; I mean, Ty and I talked, and he came out to me," Jack explains.

"Really?" Sam says, trying to keep a pout off her lips.

"Don't feel bad. I'm pretty sure the only reason that he did it was because I was there at the time. Also, I gave him plenty of openings. I just kept talking about how I would be completely fine if the were… et cetera."

"I just can't believe he's old enough to think about liking anyone," Sam says, taking his hand in hers, "He's eleven, for crying out loud. I'm not ready to have an amorous kid!"

"I know it! First there is the romance and puberty thing, and then he'll be driving, and getting a job, and going off to college."

"Let's just focus on one thing at a time," Sam interrupts, "He's ok with me knowing? I mean, you were supposed to tell me, right? You're not breaking confidence, are you?"

"No," Jack says.

**The Next Day**

Sam walks into her son's room half an hour before they normally get the kids up for school. She sits on his bed, and waits for his eyes to open.

"What's going on?" he asks, blurry-eyed.

"Your dad shared with me what you told him yesterday."

"Yeah?" Ty sits up, and tries to get his brain to function. He's still shaking off the last bits of sleep.

"I wanted to give you this," she says, offering him an envelope. "I actually write it for you on the day that you were born. I planned on giving it to you on the day of your high school graduation. I've known for a long time that I it was going to be on this occasion, though. I love you, bud," she says, kissing him on the forehead, and leaving the room.

Left alone, he carefully opens the letter up, and reads its contents.

"Dear Son,

I had no idea that it was possible to love another human being so completely.

You are so perfect right now, so bundled with potential. I look at you right now, and I know that you could be anything that you wanted to be. You are so full of possibilities that it literally makes my chest hurt.

Yet, who you are is probably already determined. Your genes have already build the hardware, and your time inside of me is most of the software. In many ways, you're already done. The rest of your life is just a revealing of who you are.

So, I wanted to let you know, right now, when you are still a mystery to me, that I love you with my whole heart. I am going to love you no matter who you are. See, I love you, because you are mine, for no other reason than this.

No matter what, forever.

Love,

Mom"

Ty is glad that she left him alone to cry over the letter without shame. A few minutes later she pops back into his room. He's still laying on the bed, although crying has stopped.

"How are you doing?" he asks.

"Come here," he says in a way that unconsciously imitates his father.

She crawls onto the bed next to him, and the rest their heads together.

"It was a good letter," Ty says, "Like, really good."

"I mean it," Sam says.

"I love you, because you're mine, too," he says.

Sam grins.

"It was a really nice thing to say, but it is okay, mom, if you'd rather have had a son who wasn't gay."

"No, I've thought about that. I've wondered if I would like to have you, exactly the way you are without being gay. Well, first of all I don't think that's possible. I think that if you weren't gay, you would be different. Second of all… it's not an illness. It's not a bad thing. Wishing it away would be like wishing that you were right-handed instead of left-handed. Different is not the same as wrong, son."

"How come so many people think it is?"

"Little kids are afraid of the dark, people are afraid of people who are different from them. Some kids never learn to turn off the nightlight, and some people never learn to treat others with respect."

Ty leans against his mother's shoulder, "I'm sorry," he whispers.

"I'm not," she whispers back.

-0-

Her extended SG-1 family was always telling Cassie how lucky she was to have left her planet, where people decided everything for you, and come to a world where you got to make decisions for yourself. It didn't exactly feel lucky to Cassie, since it involved the death of everyone she knew. Even if you put that aside, there was a certain benefit to not having to make decisions for yourself.

There was some ease in waking up in the morning, and putting on your dress; your only dress. It was much easier than going to a full closet, and picking out what you were going to wear. There was something very nice about someone telling you what you were going to be when you grew up. Someone making sure you got the right training for whatever that thing was ever since you were ten or twelve years old.

There was even something nice about someone deciding who you were going to marry; her father would certainly have done a better job of things than she had done.

There was no escaping the fact that if her whole planet hadn't died, she would be someone's wife right now. She'd probably have a baby, and certainly a trade.

She was going to be a merchant. She'd only been a few months into the training, but merchant, they'd decided.

Who was she to question their wisdom?

Granted, America didn't have merchants, exactly, and saying that she was going to be a business major wasn't exactly a road map to the rest of her life, but at least she had a plan. It had been a long time since she'd last had a plan.

She walks into the office of the community college and says, "Hi, can I get an application?"

**Six Months Later**

"Daniel, you can't go to Atlantis," Jack says with a sigh.

"Why not?" Daniel challenges.

"Because of your kids! You're a single dad, for crying out loud."

"It's not like I'm totally irresponsible. Catherine is willing to fly down, and Cassie will be there."

"Daniel, that's great, but neither of those is their parents," Jack protests.

"I'm only going to be gone for a couple of weeks."

"A couple of weeks if everything goes well," Jack points out, "You are after all going to a different galaxy. Who knows what could happen while you are there."

"Jack, I am the foremost expert on the Ancient language, I deserve to be there!"

"Why don't you try holding your breath, you haven't done that one in a while," Jack says dryly as they round the bend into his office.

Then Hammond turns around in Jack's big chair.

"General," Jack says with a huge grin on his face.

"I let myself in, I hope you don't mind."

"Absolutely not. Welcome. Miss the chair?" Jack asks bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Actually I do," Hammond says.

"Want it back?" Jack offers. He was never really fond of the job of General. It came with a lot more responsibility than he was found of. Of course, it also came with the ability to be home at night for his children which was a huge bonus, but still.

Hammond looks at Daniel, "I came to see if you'd be interested in joining the mission to Atlantis. That is, if your kids can spare you."

"Yes, Sir!" Daniel says with a wide grin covering his face.

"Sir?" Jack says pouting a little like his kids do when he eats the last of the fruit loops.

"He's the most qualified person on the planet, and the mission commander needs someone who can translate ancient," Hammond informs Jack.

"With all due respect sir, I think you should tell the mission commander that I need Daniel right here."

"You just did," Hammond says with the sort of grin that is mostly on the inside. He's spent a lot of years sending good men into the line of duty. It's nice to take his turn for once.

"I did. I did? You sir?" Jack says in shock.

"I'll have the chair shipped to Washington. You can requisition a new one."

**That Night**

Cassie wasn't alarmed when her father told her that he was going to ask Jack permission to go to Atlantis. She trusted Jack, and she knew that there was no way he was going to let her father go off to some other galaxy with the little kids waiting for him to get home.

At least, she thought that she knew that.

Turns out she was wrong.

When Daniel makes the announcement to the family they are mostly excited. Olivia is over the moon, and full of strangely specific questions about how the spacecraft works. Questions that Daniel can't answer. The little boys might not fully grasp what is going on, but they catch on the excitement of the group.

Cassie is displaying a mood which proves once and for all that she is still a sullen teenager. When the boys are tucked into bed, and Olivia is reading in hers Daniel confronts his oldest daughter in the living room.

"It's not that big of deal, I'm only going to be gone for a couple of weeks, and Catherine is flying down to give you a hand. You know that I appreciate everything that you do for the kids, and I'm not going to expect you to do even more. Actually, since she doesn't work you'll end up doing less than you usually do around the house.

"It's not about that!" she says.

"Ok, so what's it about?" he asks leaning against the cupboard behind him.

"It's about the fact that you are willing to risk your life in another galaxy! It's bad enough that you go through the gate all the time. These people disappeared! Now you want to go riding in as a white knight? Did you even consider what it's going to do to your family if you didn't come back?"

"Oh, honey," he says softly. This wasn't what he had expected, although he realizes right away that it should have been. He reaches out to hug her.

"No, mom died. She wasn't even doing any as risky as this, and she's dead! I don't think you get how real this is."

"I do understand how real this. I get how real it is for the people that we are going to rescue," he tells her.

She rolls her eyes, and starts to walk away.

"No, wait, do _you_ understand how real it is? Your mom died on a rescue mission. She did save people that day, you know? Airman Wells, and a little while after he became a father."

"Sometimes it feels like you care about everyone else's kids more than your own. Sometimes, I wish you were just a little bit more selfish. At least, selfish on our behalf."

He puts a hand lightly on his daughter's face, and says, "My dear Cassie, I promise that I am going to do my very best to come home to you."


	99. Part 9 Chapter 1

**Sorry about re-posting a chapter. This was where it belonged. I took it out of the earlier one.**

**Spoilers for "Prometheus Unbound"**

**One Week Later**

It wasn't that Daniel had no idea how to fight. I was just that he didn't have much of one. It's not for a lack of effort on the part of the people that had surrounded him. He'd managed to wiggle his way out of many a "required" Air Force training, and had faked so many emergencies that Jack had all but given up on his private trainings to teach the man how to fight.

The one thing Daniel could do was shoot. It was a skill that he'd picked up on his archeological digs over the years, but he'd naturally been quite good at it. He was familiar with guns. He'd passed the required shooting range work the very first time with his Beretta, handguns being his weapon of choice, and it hadn't taken him long to adjust to a machine gun.

A super-soldier gun with the heft of a bazooka was a big of a different matter.

When your life, and the lives of an entire ship, are on the line, your motivation increases, though, and so his shot is perfectly aimed.

The super-soldier doesn't go down, though. Damn, he never should have promised his daughter that he was coming home.

-0-

The next thing that he knows, he wakes up tied to a chair, and looking at a super-soldier's back. He begins talking to it. He doesn't know why. It's not like anyone has ever heard the things mutter more than a word or two. Still, he's talked to plenty of other things that can't talk back, and it certainly can't make his situation any worst.

He's surprised when it turns to address him.

He's a lot more surprised when it starts to flirt with him.

He's even more surprised when it takes off its helmet, and shakes out its hair, and reveals that it is not, in fact, an it, but a her. Not a horrific super-soldier her either, but a beautiful, human kind of her. She is the most beautiful women he's seen since Janet died.

Not that he's comparing this woman to his dead wife. It's not like the two of them look anything alike.

This woman is as tall as his wife was short. Her hair is as long as his wife's was short. Her nose has a point to it that is decidedly angular, and asymmetric, but which he nonetheless finds appealing.

He blinks as she asks a question. She thinks he knows how the ship works. Great, because he knows as much about a ship as… Jack does about anything he's sat through a briefing about.

He tells her that he has no idea about ships, but apparently she doesn't believe him. He can tell by the slap he gets across his face.

"Would you like me to kiss it better?" the woman asks in a voice that turns him on. Daniel hasn't felt like that since his wife died, unless you count memories or dreams of his wife, and the first time he does is when he's in a real life dangerous situation? There has got to be something wrong with him, he decides. Something majorly wrong with him.

They continue to banter back and forth, and Daniel works hard to try to force his mind to focus on the task of getting the ship back to its owners, and not on the mystery of the women who is before him.

She moves like she is trying to seduce him, but also like she is a soldier. Sex is a weapon to her, more powerful than the zat gun, although it's a bit less deadly. It wasn't _real_, what she was trying to do to him, so why did it feel like it was?

-0-

If Daniel had known that hand to hand was like this, he wouldn't have ever missed a training session. Well, maybe he would have if it was with Jack. If Vala was offering a training session, he definitely would have signed himself up. When she is sitting on his shoulders, squeezing his head between her legs, he actually smells her. It takes every ounce of will power he has not to turn his head around and bury his face in her. When she is sitting on top of him, he has to think of unsexy things like Goa'uld in gaudy dresses and people incorrectly translating hieroglyphics to keep her from noticing how excited she is making him.

Even her punches and childish ear-pulling turn him on.

Then she grabs him by the shirt, and pulls him up for a kiss. The first one is quick, and twisty. It reminds him of a phase Olivia, Ty, and Emma went through when they were eight. They'd taken to giving each other "snake bites" where you twist the arm. She's making the same motion with her mouth, but it's not aiming for pain. It's a tasting, and she must like what she tastes, because she goes in for another kiss.

It's possessive the way she's manhandling him, and he's not quite sure if what is happening is voluntary or not. He pulls away, to tell her that she's a fruitcake, and she stops kissing him. So it was voluntary. It was his doing as much as hers.

He did cheat on his wife.

That's the last thought that he has before she head butts him to the floor. She runs over to the controls, and starts to type. He barely has the strength to zat her from where he lays on the floor.

He feels guilty doing it to this women who he likes, a lot more than he would like to admit, but hell, she stole the ship.

-0-

He shouldn't be sad that she's gone. Well, ok, he should, but for a very different reason than the real reason he's sad. He should feel sad, because she's a thief and she got away. In reality, though, he just feels sad, because he's going to miss her.

Is it wrong to feel something for a woman again?

Janet has barely been dead a year. Besides, what did he think he was going to do with the space pirate? It wasn't exactly like he could have brought her home, and introduced her to his children. Talk about a bad influence. Actually, the fact that he even had children probably would have been a deal breaker for her. She didn't exactly seem like the motherly type.

It was way too soon for him to be thinking about moving on. If he ever did, suddenly thought was unlikely, it would be with some matronly widow. Yeah, probably in a decade or so. A decade would be long enough wouldn't it be?

He had nothing to worry about, because he wasn't very likely to ever see that space pirate again.


	100. End Part 9

**Spoilers for "Avalon"**

**One Month Later **

It's impossible, Jack knows, to accept the job. It would mean uprooting his wife, his father-in-law, and his kids. It would mean that for the second time in their lives together, his wife's career would be taking a hit. He felt bad enough that he'd done that to her once, he didn't want to do it to her again.

Besides, if he took the job, he was going to have to be politician in Washington. He is pretty sure that he doesn't want that.

Well, she's going to be pretty mad at him if she finds out that he was offered the job from someone else. The Air Force is full of gossip, and he knows there is a chance that would happen if he doesn't tell her, so he goes to her office.

Crap, he thinks as he opens the door, she must already know. She's sitting there with a stern look on her face, and as soon as he comes into the room, she stands up and walks over to him.

"Jack, we have to talk about our careers," she says.

"I swear I was going to tell you!" he exclaims.

"You knew that I was offered a job at Area 51?" she asks looking at him startled.

"You were? That's great! You've been saying that you wish you could do more research, and this would be your chance. Of course, you wouldn't be going through the gate anymore, and I know how much you love that. What are you thinking?"

"You didn't know that I was offered this job until a minute ago, so what did you think I was talking about when you first walked in here?"

He fidgets, "It's not important now."

She puts a hand on his arm, and gives him a look which loosens his tongue.

"I got a job offer in Washington. I'd already decided no, I just thought you'd be mad if I didn't tell you before I gave them my official answer."

"Why did you decide no?" she asks softly.

"I didn't want to move our family."

"Well, that can't be it, because you seemed eager enough to move our family a couple of minutes ago to Nevada. Why was Washington so different?"

"Sam, your career took the hit when I moved here. I won't let it happen again."

"I never thought of it as my career taking the hit. I mean, I got to have a command."

"But you weren't on the front line team, Sam."

"Jack, I don't want your career to take the hit any more than you want mine too," she protests.

"Sam, I really don't want to be a politician," he admits.

She smiles at him. "Ok, but that still doesn't meant that we have to move. We could decide to turn both jobs down."

"Honey, I think we should talk to the kids before we make any decisions, but if you want this, I think you should have it."

"Are you sure?" Sam asks searching his eyes.

"Positive."

"So what are you going to do? You're not exactly scientist material."

"Well, we're going to use the Air Force's plan of trying to station married people near each other. If that doesn't work… then I retire."

"Jack."

"I retired before."

"Yes, because you were depressed."

"This time it will be because I am unbelievably happy," he says.

**That Night**

The O'Neill family comes together for a family meeting. Ty is fidgeting. Jenny is sitting on her father's lap manipulating his face with her hands, and giggling.

"You're not going to have another baby are you?" Hannah asks with disgust, looking at her little sister.

"Watch it, you were 'another baby' once, too," her brother warns.

"No, our family isn't getting any bigger. It might be moving," Jacks says.

"Transfer? Who was transferred?" Jacob says.

"I don't have orders, it's just an option," Sam says.

"I don't want to move away from Emma," Ty blurts.

It's like a punch in the gut for both Jack and Sam. Here was a girl who had been their daughter for more than half of her life, someone who still came over to their house once a week or so, someone who their children saw every day at school – and they hadn't even realized that they were talking about leaving her.

"We can't go," Sam agrees.

Jack kisses her temple, and Jacob whispers sorry. It's right, though, Sam feels it in her bones, it is right to stay.

**A Month Later**

The Space Pirate is back. She's dressed in the kind of outfit he's only ever seen in a dirty magazine. Not that he spends a lot of time looking at dirty magazines… there was a time when he was a teenager… but not now. The point was, she wasn't dressed the way you'd expect people, er ladies, to dress.

He'd kill his daughters if they ever went out in public in a getup like that.

She makes some joke about being pregnant with his kid, and he whirls out of the room, furious. If he's honest with himself, really honest, the main reason that he is mad is because he's thought about it. He's an idiot to have even considered it. He's already a struggling single dad with four kids, and one glance at a thief in skin tight clothes, and he's picturing her in a maternity dress.

Worse, he's picturing her in HIS DEAD WIFE's maternity dress. The blue one that dipped low around her swollen breasts, and tight across her belly.

This women is a stranger. Worse than a stranger, she's an enemy. She beat the crap out of him the last time that they were together. Why on Earth would he be picturing her carrying his child within her?

He doesn't even want to have more kids. Four is more than he could handle, especially with Cassie off the deep end, and Olivia reaching the snotty teenager phase.

The General's voice calls him back, and he has to face the flirty hussy. She hands him the tablet, and their fingers just barely avoid making contact.

He tells her that the thing is worthless.

She tells him that it's in code. As if she wasn't already making all of his dreams come true, she had to throw in a freaking code. She might as well call him Indie and take Sean Connery along for the adventure, and all of his dreams would be fulfilled.

The two of them bend over a translation, and Daniel suddenly has a flash back of something that he hasn't had in a long time. When he was a child, his family used to study things, together. His father and his mother and himself all bent over the same translation. He has missed that in the years that have passed since he was eight years old.

He loved his wives, and he loves his kids, but none of them has ever bent over an artifact and studied it with him like this.

Then she snaps some 'ceremonial marriage bracelet' on him, which apparently makes it so he can't get very far away from her without passing out.

Moment ruined.

Well, at least the adventure still seems pretty legit.

**That Night**

"Inviting me over to your house, how risqué!" Vala says, leaning on his car.

"Don't flatter yourself. You're going to be sleeping on the couch. The only reason you are coming over to my house is because those stupid bracelets didn't offer me a choice," he says, flinging the car door open.

"Of course you had a choice, darling; you could have stayed on base like the nice General advised you to."

"Cassie has a big test to study for, and couldn't watch the kids. Besides, they would be mad if I didn't spend the night with them before I left on a big trip. I always do."

Vala uses the opening of the car door to hide her stricken face, "Cassie is your wife? And kids… you never mentioned your kids. How many are there?"

Daniel laughs a little enjoying her discomfort. It's about time after all the times that she's made him squirm in the time that they've known each other. "Cassie is my daughter, and I have four kids in all."

"Four kids? One of them old enough to watch the others. What is she, like fourteen?" Vala asks nervously.

"Cassie is 20, Olivia is 12, Will is 4, and my baby Drew is 2," he says, turning the key and starting to drive. The vehicle makes a lot more noise than anything that Vala is used to, and she jumps when the motor starts.

"You don't look like you're old enough to have a kid that's twenty. How young do you reproduce on your world?"

He giggles, "I guess Cassie is kind of old for my kid. She's only nineteen years younger than me. She's adopted. I've known her since she was eleven, though. She's mine."

Vala sits in silence, absorbing these new facts, and trying to reconcile them with the man before her. "It's pretty brave of you, to adopt four children as a single dad."

"Will and Drew aren't adopted, and I wasn't single."

"Oh," there is a pause during which she fully expects him to explain. It was foolish of her, she realizes as the silence stretches on. "Are you single now?"

He touches the ring on his finger. She'd studied the Tau'ri long ago, in an underground school run by a man she'd hoodwinked into hiding her when she was hiding out after one of her scams when sour. Even more sour than her scams normally went. It was a ring that meant eternal bondage, not to a god, but to another human.

But he had used the past tense.

"My wife, Janet, died a little over a year ago."

There is so much emotion in his voice as he says these words that she catches a choke in her own throat. "I'm sorry," she says, almost in a whisper. She tries to think of something else to say. Something that would let him know that she understands. That she knows what it is to grieve. She could tell him about her mother, or her fiancé, or the Goa'uld who controlled her body for the better part of a decade.

In the end, it all sounds hallow. No matter what someone says to you when you have lost someone, it always sounds smaller than your own grief.

"I actually lost two wives," he says suddenly.

Vala feels like she has been punched in the gut. His face shows no emotion, but the air in the car is heavy with all the things that he will not say, all the things that he doesn't even dare feel.

"Sha're was murdered by the Goa'uld."

It's an old story. Older than this, the very first human planet, but it still smarts.

"I wasn't lying to you when I said that my people suffered from the Goa'uld," she tells him.

"I believe you. We adopted Cassie after Nirrti wiped out her entire planet."

Vala hadn't taken into account that his children might be from other words. She had assumed that the Ta'uri were a primitive people, taking their first stumbling steps into the world of interplanetary journeys.

"What Goa'uld is Olivia fleeing from?" she asks.

"Olivia is from Earth," he says.

She almost regrets the bracelets now. Forcing her way into his home. Yet, this conversation has proved to her, even more strongly, that she is doing the right thing.

That ring on his finger is proclaiming that he would let no one in except by force, and perhaps they need someone. All of them.

Just then, Daniel pulls up in front of Olivia's school. She is sitting on the steps talking to Ty. He's in the middle of a growth spurt, and is towering over her even as they sit. He tells some joke, and Olivia laughs harder than the joke, or any joke, would require, and bounces her head against his shoulder.

Ty is oblivious to her antics; he's watching a game of catch two boys have going on a few feet away in the grass.

"Livvy!" Daniel calls, making the girl say a hasty goodbye before heading for the car. As soon as Vala sees which one Olivia is, she says, "You're daughter knows that her boyfriend is gay, right?

Daniel rolls his eyes, annoyed that even an alien can pick up on that dynamic so quickly when his own daughter can't, "He's not her boyfriend, and we don't actually know that Ty's gay."

"I think you should tell her," Vala nods helpfully.

"Thank you for your opinion, shut your mouth," Daniel says as Olivia opens the door to the car.

Olivia stares at the women in the passenger seat for a few seconds before she sits down in the car, "Dad, is she your girlfriend?"

"Observant little thing. Vala Mal Doran. Pleased to meet you, Olivia. You're father has told me all about you," she says, twisting around in the seat so she can shake the girl's hand.

"She is not my girlfriend! I work with her. Reluctantly. She used some space technology to stick us together. Literally," Daniel says, holding up his wrist to his daughter.

"It was only a joke, Daniel! I can't understand why you would be so upset by the mere idea of spending time with me in a romantic context!"

"We're around my kids now, Vala, and I don't want my children having to get used to the idea of Daddy dating until Daddy is actually dating," he whispers to the women beside him. It's loud enough so his daughter hears him too, it was meant to be.

"I'm fine with it," Olivia says lightly.

"Really?" he asks, turning his head so quickly to look at her that it's not safe driving for a couple of seconds.

She giggles, "Yeah; you're way too hot to be a monk, dad. I know that eventually you're going to be back on the market. Besides, you were so sad after mom died, and I don't want you to be like that. I want to see you happy."

Daniel's heart clenches. His daughter doesn't think that he's happy. "Honey, I love my kids so much. I am over the moon happy with our family just the way it is. I don't want you to think that just because I needed help for my depression after your mother died that I don't love you with my whole heart."

Vala is surprised by the mention of mental health services, so quick and cavalier. She hadn't pegged Daniel as the sort of man who would get help with that sort of thing. She had figured him for the suffer-in-silence type.

"I know that, Dad. What I'm talking about is more than just not being sad. I still see it sometimes when you're reading a book to the boys or when you are translating some old rock. It's just… when Mom was still alive, you used to get that look on your face every time you looked at her. You guys were disgusting together. I want you to have that again," Olivia says with the firmness which clearly shows she's put a great deal of thought into this.

Daniel clears this throat, unwilling to believe that they've actually discussed all of this before someone who is practically a stranger to them both. "Well, Vala is not that person."

Vala's stomach clenches at the words. She knew, of course that there was nothing between Daniel, and herself. Still she wouldn't have dismissed him so quickly, so easily.

He loved deeply, this one. Perhaps too deeply for the likes of her.

"Anyway, talking about boys, there is a dance this weekend, and Ty asked me to go!" Olivia gushes.

"Ty asked you to go to a dance?" Daniel asks.

Olivia squeals, too exited to form her response into words.

"Like, together, he asked you to go to the dance with him?" Daniel asks.

"Duh, dad!" Olivia giggles.

"As friends?" Vala asks cautiously. She wonders if she should be the one to tell this little girl the news about her friend. Perhaps it would smart less if it came from someone who was almost a stranger. Well, either less or more, it was hard to tell.

"No, like as boyfriend and girlfriend. I can go, right, dad? I mean, your rule is that you have to meet the person before they can go on a date with your kid, but like it's Ty, right? You've known him longer than you've known me!"

"I don't have a problem with Ty," Daniel admits.

"So I can date him?" Olivia asks excitedly.

Daniel tries desperately to think of a way out of this. When he fails, he nods his head, causing another squeal of excitement from the backseat.


	101. Part 10 Chapter 1

**Wow people! I'm sorry my chapters were super screwy! I had so many out of order. I think…think I have it fixed now. Plus, I was on vacation for more than a week, and didn't get a chance to write. As a reward for your patience I am going to post two new chapters today. Really new, not random out of place new (again, I hope). **

She is an intruder on their happy night. It is such an odd uncomfortable feeling that she comes close to calling an end to it, and taking off the bracelets.

She can't quite bring herself to do it, because the family is so happy. Her family was never like this. Oh, there were good times, to be sure. There were days when her mother would dance with her across the wooden floors of her home. There were days when she and her mother would kneed the bread into submission. There were days when her father would return from some long journey with some trinket, just for her.

Mostly though, her life had been full of a lot of work, and only a little of this sort of playfulness.

Daniel is down on the floor wrestling with his two sons. Every now and again, he balances one of them on his feet, and lifts the feet far up in the air. The little boy then flattens himself out, and sings a song which she is given to understand is from some show they have made about a man with abilities beyond that of a normal human.

The whole time Olivia is cuddled on the couch reading a book, and this makes Vala wonder if there is some family dynamic she does not know about which excludes the girl.

"Don't you want to play?" she asks.

Olivia shakes her head.

Daniel grabs both of his son's under his armpits, and whispers to them.

"No!" Olivia says crawling up the back of the couch to stand on top of it. "Please don't tickle the sister! I'll do anything!"

"Sisda!" Drew explains, no longer able to wait for the charge command, but launching himself across the room.

"Dannings and Aliens! Let's play Dannings and Aliens!" Olivia calls out just in time to save herself.

"But Cassie's not here. No alien," Will protests.

Daniel's eyes turn to Vala with a wicked look in them. Before she can think of a way to save herself, he and Olivia say together, "Vala is an alien."

The two boys launch themselves at her with slippery kisses for some reason that she fails to grasp. Although she does manage to determine it's another TV show, whatever in the blazes those things are.

"Save me, Olivia," she pleads as she peels the boys off her in turn only to have them return with even wetter kisses in a matter of seconds.

"You shouldn't have disturbed my reading, and none of this would have happened!" Olivia says, hiding her smirk behind her book.

"Have mercy on me!" Vala pleads.

"Kiss them back!" Daniel advises.

Within minutes, Vala has all of Daniel's children, Olivia included, on the floor, giggling as she blows on their bellies.

Well, not all of his children of course. There is one missing. The one she has not met yet. Cassie walks in at the height of the ramble, and surveys the scene with disgust.

"Who is this?" she asks.

"A'ien!" Drew offers with pride as he lays a kiss on her.

"Dad's not-a-girlfriend from work," Olivia says in a teasing tone which is clearly meant to imply that she does not believe her father's classification of Vala.

Cassie freezes, and the color goes out of her face. "What?"

"Honey, I swear, Vala is just someone that I'm working with. Temporarily, before she goes back to her alien planet. There is nothing going on between us, your sister was just teasing me," Daniel says freeing, himself from the game on the floor to stand before his oldest daughter.

"Then why is she here, at our house, at seven o'clock at night?" Cassie challenges.

"That's my fault," Vala says standing up, "I was afraid that they wouldn't give me a fair chance if they had any other option. So I slapped a bracelet on his wrist, and now your poor father can't be very far away from me without getting sick."

"So you guys are stuck together? I'm supposed to believe you're just co-workers?" Cassie asks with a sneer.

"I'm sorry," Olivia says, hating the tone of voice that the grow-ups are using with each other, and desperate to soften the tone. Or at least turn it upon herself, who she views as the one who justly deserved it.

"This isn't your doing," Vala says, pulling the girl into a hug. Olivia fits rather snugly under Vala's armpit. "Look, Cassandra. You're right, I was playing at a bit of a game. I was flirting with your father. That was before I really knew him. Before I met his children," Daniel's heart sinks in his chest. He was right, someone like her could never go for someone with a house full of children. She was much too free spirited for that. "That was before I understood how deeply he loved your mother. You have nothing to worry about, you're father never even gave me a second glance." She walks over to Daniel, and takes the bracelet of his wrist.

"Goodbye, Daniel, and I'm sorry. They'll most likely ship me back to my planet before you get back to the base, so this is probably goodbye forever. You don't think they'll put me in jail, do you? If I'm in jail when you get to work tomorrow morning, you will put in a kind word for me, won't you?" she asks with only a hint of a pout, and a lot more seriousness than she has had since he's known her. More serious even than she had when she was taking over the ship.

"Vala, you can't go back to the base tonight."

"Why not?" she pouts.

"Well, you don't have a car, for one thing."

"I'll walk."

"It is six miles, and I bet you don't even know the way."

"I have a very acute sense of direction, I'll have you know!" she says, her voice rising with offense.

"You're not used to the city. You're not going by yourself."

"You can't leave your children."

"Cassie will watch them if I have to go, but I would much rather you stayed here for the night."

Vala sits down in a chair, surrendering. She knew that there was no way she could find her way back through the darkness anyway. "One last act of mercy before you hand me over to the proper authorities in the morning?" she asks.

"Please, you're not going to jail," he says.

"I stole your ship."

"You stole the United States Air Force's ship."

"That still seems like it would be a serious crime."

"That's a much more serious crime."

"Then I put alien technology on you, clearly not knowing what it did. How are you not mad about that one?"

"I _am_ mad about that one."

"Not mad enough to send me to jail," she says.

He looks at her, knowing that she is right. Knowing that he should be angrier at the things that she has done to him. He can't figure it out himself. He sighs, "I just look at you, and I know there is a potential for… something good, Vala. Something very good."

"And you're trying to tell me you're not together," Cassie says before pushing past the two of them, and going up into her room to study.

**Two Days Later**

How did Daniel get himself talked into using this communication device with Vala, of all people? Oh yeah, that's right; her stupid dysfunctional bracelets. Who starts using alien technology when they had no idea how it worked anyway? Oh right, everyone, like, all the time. But still.

He was still linked to her. If they were more than a few hundred feet apart they would both pass out. *

So now he's going into another galaxy with Vala by his side.

Apparently, he's going into another galaxy in someone else's body. That's creepy. At least they picked a male body for him. How weird would it be to find yourself suddenly in the body of the other gender? Especially a well-breasted member of the other gender as Vala appeared to be occupying.

Not that she was anywhere close to short on the breast department when she as in her own body.

His eyes fall on the wall, and he reads the word. "Marriage." The marriage house. He can't imagine being married to the woman in front of him. He'd done that… twice. Each time, it had ended in death.

If he did risk marriage again, it was going to be with that upstanding widow he'd imagined yesterday. Certainly someone respectable. Not someone who regularly put gold coins down her bodice. In fact, not even someone who had a bodice. No, his upstanding widow was going to hide her cleavage in some way far more upstanding than a bodice.

Vala was not the marrying type, anyway, so there was nothing to worry about from that front.

She wants to know what that sign means. The marriage sign. Should he lie?

The truth spills out of his mouth.

She finds it funny. Flirty funny like she finds most everything else. But for a moment, in her eye, he catches something else. Perhaps Vala Mal Doran is, in fact, the marrying type.

**One Week Later**

"You look very handsome, Ty," Sam says as she fashions a tie around her son's neck.

"Hey, mom, on the way can we stop and pick up Livy? I told her that we were going to give her a ride, and then it totally slipped my mind to actually ask you to give her a ride. Sorry!" Ty says with a sheepish look on his face.

Sam's hands go still while still on the tie, even though it's securely fashioned. "You asked Livy to go to this dance with you?"

"No, I said that I would pick her up for the dance," Ty says rolling his eyes.

Sam's hands leave the tie in order to smack herself in the forehead, "Tell me you did not use those exact words!"

"I don't get what the big deal is," Ty says exasperated at his mother's antics. "Livy and I are friends. We're always carpooling places together."

"Does Olivia know that you're gay?" Sam asks.

"No! I'm not ready to tell anyone yet. That doesn't mean that she's not my friend. I'm sure when I tell her she's going to be ok with it," Ty defends.

"I think you should tell her sooner rather than later," Sam says.

"I'm not ready to come out to anyone yet. I haven't even told my own grandfather, why would I go around telling friends?"

"It's just… Ty, I've thought. You're father thinks to. We've thought for a while that Olivia might have a crush on you."

"Ew, gross, we're practically brother and sister!" Ty says, crinkling up his nose.

"Have you ever noticed that you are the only one who makes that comparison? Or that every time you say something like that, Olivia gets all uncomfortable?"

He shakes his head, "You really think she likes me… like that?"

"Maybe. I just think you should probably tell her, because the longer you wait, the harder it's going to be, and I know that the last thing you would ever want was to break Olivia's heart."

"It's weird. It would be like if you woke up one morning, and found out that Uncle Daniel was in love with you. Just something that you never dreamed in a million years was even possible. I'll talk to her tonight."

Sam bends down, and plants a kiss on her son's cheek. He wipes it away with a look of disgust, and Sam is left to wonder when exactly her son started growing up.

-0-

Ty and Olivia are sitting at the bleachers at school. Olivia is wearing a very sparkly dress that Ty remembers complimenting once on some other girl.

This fact is definitely lending credibility to his mother's theory.

They are engaged in an argument over whether C.S. Lewis was better at science fiction or fantasy, a topic that would normally take all of her focus.

However, her eyes follow each new couple as they enter the dance floor. She seems mesmerized by each awkward invitation to dance. When Ty's favorite athlete asks out a girl in a pink dress, it's hard to determine which of them is more jealous.

"You want to dance," he says. It's a statement, not a question, but her eager ears mishear it, and she jumps up, and holds a hand out for him to take.

He can't bear to explain to her what he meant, and he figures that he might as well do what he is about to do while they are on the dance floor as anywhere else, so he puts his hand in hers. He discovers with horror that her hand is drenched in sweat.

She is so focused on him that she trips on the way down the bleachers. He puts out his hand to catch her, and it lands on her hip. Her eyes alight with excitement, and a chaperone makes their way over to break up the 'public display of affection', so Ty pulls away from her like she was made of molten lava.

They make their way to the dance floor. Most of the couples aren't dancing by the strictest definition. They're holding on to each other, and swaying back and forth. Ty's ballet training won't let him do that, so he pulls the girl into a rather respectable waltz.

A sigh escapes Olivia's lips; she got the good dancer.

"Livy, I have something important to tell you, and I probably should have told you a long time ago. I would have, only, I didn't see it. My mom did, but I didn't believe her until…" he drifts off and takes a deep breath. Then he leans forward.

Olivia's heart skips a beat. He's going to kiss her! They'll be kicked out of the dance, and have her parents called, but he's going to kiss her in front of all of these people.

Then her heart drops as she hears the secret that he leaned forward to whisper to her, "I'm gay."

***In the series they said this was only true because the communication device was used in conjunction with the stones. However, they were really just guessing about technology they did not understand. I maintain that it is just as likely that this would be true whether or not they'd used the technology with the communication stones.**

**Authors Note: Junior High dances… as a teacher I've discovered they're even more painful to watch than participate in. Seriously… awkward.**


	102. Part 10 Chapter 2

"What?" Olivia stammers.

"I'm not ready to tell anyone yet, so I would really appreciate it if you just keep this between the two of us," Ty says quickly, nervously. After all, maybe she is going to be angry. Pain causes anger, more often than not. Maybe his best friend is going to be so angry at him that she is going to tell everyone his secret.

"Of course not, I'm just glad you told me," she says, seeming to have been hurt by the insinuation that she would tell anyone.

They dance in silence for a few long seconds until the dance ends, and another one begins. The moments of silence between the two dances are enough to push the words out of their mouths.

"I'm sorry," Ty says.

"Sorry you told me?" she asks.

He shakes his head, "No, I didn't know that… I would have told you a lot sooner if I knew that you liked me. I would never want to hurt you, Olivia."

She liked him for more than a year, but what she didn't want, what she really didn't want, was the pity of this boy, "Who says I like you?"

Ty gives her a look which was a perfect imitation of his grandfather's "You've got to be kidding me" look.

"Ok, so I did, a little," Olivia confesses.

"I think if I was going to like any girl," he whispers that word after checking to make sure they are far enough away from the other couples that they are not going to be overheard, "It would be you."

Olivia smiles, "That's probably a lie. You always said that you thought of me like a sister. I should have known before now."

"I hope we can still be friends," Ty says.

"Of course!" Olivia exclaims. It's bad enough that she has to lose all of her plans for a future where she and Ty make lots of babies. It would be a whole lot worse if she also had to give up her best friend.

Ty's shoulders slump with relief, "Well, I'm relieved to hear that."

"In fact, maybe we should… it would help both of us!" Olivia says with shinning eyes.

"I think you left out the content of that sentence," Ty tells her.

"What if we pretended we were dating?" Olivia asks in excitement.

Ty gives her another perfect Jacob Carter look of disbelieve.

"No, just hear me out. You said you didn't want people to know about you. Well, they would be a whole lot less likely to suspect if you walked around school with your girlfriend on your elbow."

"What is in it for you?" Ty asks suspiciously.

"You know as well as I do that whatever girls have a boyfriend in junior high school are rocked to instant fame."

"Would we have to, like, kiss and stuff?" Ty asks, crinkling up his nose at the thought. This is harder for Olivia to take than the actual news that he was gay, but she presses on as if he hadn't just injured her.

"No, we might have to hold hands and stuff every now and again. For the rest of it, we could just say that our parents are against public displays of affection. I'm pretty sure that my dad really is, so that shouldn't be a big deal. If all else fails, we could show them a picture of our 'uncle' Teal'c, and tell them that he told us to knock it off."

"That would be quite believable," Ty agrees.

"I'm sure people would buy it, especially if they saw the way that you dance," Olivia says, allowing a dreamy little sigh to escape her lips.

"Is it going to be too hard for you, considering the way that you feel?" he asks suddenly. He can see that this whole idea could so easily end in disaster. That she could fall for him even more than she already had. That he could end up breaking her heart, and be minus one best friend. All of these were things that he really didn't think he could bear.

"I'll be fine. I know where you stand. It will just be a friendship. We've been friends for years," Olivia says lightly. She doesn't mention how many of those years she was constructing for the two of them a perfect life in her head.

"My parents are going to know. I mean, I'll have to tell them that this is fake or they'd think I'm a monster. They know that I'm gay. I've also been meaning to tell Grandpa."

"I don't want dad to know. He already said that I could date you. I might tell Cassie, though. This seems like exactly the kind of thing that would bring us closer together as two gossipy sisters."

Ty understands how the distance between the two sisters has grown ever since Janet's death. It's too bad, because Olivia could really use someone to talk about her mother with. Olivia and Ty had tried talking about it a couple of times right after it had happened. It was awkward, though. He didn't really understand grief, and she had a bit too intimate knowledge of it after having lost three parents in all.

He's listened, but after the first sharing, Olivia hadn't come back for more. Ty had been secretly relieved.

"Ok, I don't mind if you change your mind and end up telling your family that I'm gay, and this is fake. Only, please don't tell anyone at school."

Olivia nods her head, and then bites her lip, some small worry having worked away at her for some time now, "You know that it's nothing to be ashamed of, right?"

"Adults are a lot more understanding than teenagers about this type of thing. Even kids in high school seem to be more understanding than kids in middle school. I don't plan on keeping this a secret forever. I'm just waiting for a time when it will be less scary to come out," Ty says.

Olivia nods, and they dance in silence for a couple of seconds. Already, they are attracting the attention of the other dance goers. No-one dances for three songs in a row. No-one, not even the few people who are already dating as seventh graders.

Ty and Olivia are oblivious to the attention that makes the announcement of their "going out" old news by the time Olivia whispers it to a couple of her friends at the end of the night.

Olivia starts to giggle in Ty's arms.

"What's so funny?" he demands.

"I'm just thinking… I should have known. You taught me how to play with dolls," she says, burying her mouth in his shoulder to stop more laughter from coming out.

"You needed to learn to use your imagination a little bit more," he defends himself.

"You wore a dress to your parent's wedding," she continues.

"I am not a cross-dresser anymore. Get that straight, little missy. I like men's clothing," he says proudly.

"So, what color is your tie?" Olivia asks.

"Periwinkle," he says without missing a beat.

Another roll of giggles come out of her.

"What exactly about my," whispering again, "sexual orientation is so funny to you?"

Her face goes somber in a second, "I'm sorry, Ty. I swear I wasn't laughing at you. I was laughing at myself, and how stupid I was to ever have a crush on you! I should have known. We are best friends, and all the signs pointed to us never being more than best friends. I'm laughing at myself because I didn't see it before. I was a fool to ever fall for you."

Ty pauses, measuring his words carefully. "You say best friends like it's a second place trophy, Olivia, it's not."

"I know, being best friends with you is good. Really good."

He twirls her out the length of his arm, and then pulls her back in for a 'cuddle' as another song ends. Their bodies at the end of it, are much farther away than is typical for adults doing that dance move, but they are still close enough that a chaperone moves in to break it up.

"You're cheapening the idea of friendship," he says, releasing her, and standing in front of her in the minutes that lapse before the next dance starts. "Junior high romance, that isn't the kind of thing that lasts. Now a friendship, it can go on and on forever. It's family that you choose. It's better than dating."

Olivia looks at the boy before her. The one she'd pictured having her first kiss with. The one she thought would ask her to prom. The one she thought would get down on one knee and propose to her (how small-minded she was, she thought, a Ty engagement would be a big thing indeed, only it would never be her that he asked). This was the one that she thought would be the father to all of her children. This is the one that she thought she would love for all of time.

Surely friendship was less than all of that?

"I was an idiot to fall for someone who didn't even like gender I belong to," she says taking his hands in hers as the music starts up again. This one is a fast dance, and they keep a lot of space between them as it starts. Olivia tries to convince herself that the reason for the space is not the conversation that they are having.

"No more stupid than me," Ty confesses.

She looks in his face, "Tyler Charles O'Neill, you've got a crush?" she whispers.

His face turns scarlet.

"Spill!" she demands.

"Are you sure we're ok to talk about all of this, considering?" he asks softly, careful of her feelings.

"Yes, now give me the dirt!" she exclaims.

His eyes fall on the longed-for football player, and Olivia squeals in vicarious excitement.

Heads turn, and in the lore of Cheyenne Mountain Junior High that was the moment when they became "a couple".

-0-

"How did the dance go?" Daniel asks when Olivia twirls into the living room after the O'Neill's drop her off.

"Great, Ty and I are dating!" she announces.

Stunned silence greet her. Daniel looks first at Cassie, and then at Vala. They are obviously thinking the same thing he is. Someone has got to tell that girl the truth before she gets her heart broken. Actually, the other two are not thinking the exact same thing as him. They are both hoping that he will be the one to break the bad news to his daughter. After all, he is her father.

"Are you sure, you're dating, dating? Maybe you just misunderstood him," Daniel hedges.

Olivia rolls her eyes, "I think I can correctly interpret the words, 'Would you like to date me, Olivia?'. We're dating," she says with a proud nod of her head.

"I don't think that this is such a good idea," Daniel says carefully.

"No way, you already approved him. You said I could go to the dance with him. You've known Ty for like forever, and you APPROVED of him. You can't change your mind now!"

"This is not about Ty…"

"Really, so it's about me? You don't think that I'm good enough to date Ty? Really? I'm your daughter, you're supposed to be on my side all of the time," Olivia says, carefully turning all of his arguments inside out before he even really has a chance to use them.

"Ty is gay," Daniels says suddenly, involuntarily, without knowing that it was going to come out of his mouth before he said it. Perhaps it was better that way, because even if he had reflected before he said it, he still would have said it. He would do anything to protect his daughter.

Olivia blinks at him in surprise, "How did you know? Did his dad out him?"

"I didn't officially know, I just guessed. Wait, you knew that Ty was gay? What are you doing dating him, then?" Daniel asks befuddled.

"Well, we're not really dating, of course. That would be ridiculous. We're just pretending that we are dating," Olivia says cheerfully. Then she bites her lip, "You won't tell Ty that I told you, will you? He doesn't want anyone to know, and the only reason I admitted it was because I thought you already knew."

"Explain to me how pretending to date your gay crush is less ridiculous than actually dating him," Daniel says with his arms crossed.

"See, Ty doesn't want to come out yet. Well, no-one is going to suspect him of being gay when he's got a girlfriend…" Olivia begins.

Daniel cuts her off, "And you get to pretend that he's your boyfriend. I think you are playing with fire, little girl. I don't want to see you get burned."

"That's not what this is about. See, you get to be very popular when you are one of the first girls to start dating," Olivia says proudly.

"She's not wrong," Vala says, adding in her head that you get to be even more popular if you are one of the first girls to start having sex, although that is only with the boys.

"I don't want my daughter being popular for that reason!" Daniel booms, as if he'd read Vala's mind.

"Chill, dad; it's just dating, not even real dating," Olivia says.

"No, I am putting my foot down. This is going to end badly. You might not have the forethought to see it, but luckily you have a father who does have the forethought. I forbid you to pretend to date Ty. You can go and tell your friends what an evil monster your father is for not letting you date. That should win you almost as many popularity points as if you dated him."

Olivia hangs her head, and walks out of the room looking completely defeated. In her head she is doing a happy dance. Not only is she getting to pretend to date Ty, but it's a forbidden romance. He actually used the word forbid. She might as well be a Capulet. The only way this could be any better was if the romance was real!

Daniel is completely fooled by his daughter's dejected appearance.

Vala is not.


	103. Part 10 Chapter 3

**Spoilers for "Beachhead"**

**Two Months Later **

Vala knows that she has to do it. It's the only logical way to save the day. Someone has to do it, and there is a very good chance that someone is going to die.

It only makes sense that that someone was going to be her.

Everyone else has kids to go home to. Everyone else would be missed if they went on this foolhardy mission.

If someone doesn't do it, and fast, the entire universe is going to be taken over by the not so friendly Ori.

She was burnt at the stake. She'd died. Everything after that was a gift, really. A gift of the Ori. It was kind of fitting, in an ironic sort of way, that she would use their own gift to destroy them.

"What are you doing?" Daniel's voice reaches out to her over the radio. It's not too late, she could still chicken out. She could still ring aboard the big Earth ship. She didn't have to risk her life.

But by not risking her life, she would really be risking theirs. All of theirs, including their precious children, and that was not something that Vala Mal Doran could live with.

"Trying to help, Daniel, someone had to do something, and you wouldn't listen."

She tells them that she thinks she can make it back.

It's a lie.

She wonders what death is going to feel like. She wonders if there is some kind of an afterlife. She wonders if whoever is in charge of that afterlife is better at separating her action from that of a Goa'uld than the people of her village were.

Then there is unbelievable shooting pain all through her body. She presses the button for the rings, and steps into the platform, because you never know, there might be a miracle coming her way. SG-1 had been handed a lot of miracles.

Then again, she wasn't actually a member of SG-1 now was she? So whatever god, spirit, alien, or force which looked out for that team so carefully, probably didn't care quite as much for her.

Still, one could hope.

-0-

Daniel had passed out when Vala hadn't made it back onto the rings. He would let them think that it was because of the link between him and her. It wasn't though.

He'd lost someone else. He'd lost so many people already. Granted, he hadn't been that close to Vala, and she'd already burnt to death before his eyes. He should be used to it.

You never really get used to death though, not really.

-0-

Some dream, some horrible dream involving a face full of fire hovering over her bed. A face full of fire giving her something, something she didn't want.

Or something she did want very much. Something she wanted so much that it would break her heart when it was given to her.

Vala opens her eyes and finds herself in someone's bed. That's not a huge surprise. It's happened to her before. Only, she figured the next time it happened she'd be in Daniel's bed.

A man walks in. No, he limps in.

She loves the broken ones, she always has. The birds with the broken wings, the bruised and broken soldiers, the men with enough emotional baggage to last a life time. It hurt to love the broken ones though, either they got better-and they left, or they were broken so completely that they left with all their brokenness-like her father left.

Either way she was going to get hurt.

This kind of brokenness, the physical kind, might be safer than the emotional kind she'd been dealing with back on Daniel's planet.

At least he wouldn't be able to run away from her when the flirting got too much like Daniel could. This man, she could definitely outrun.

"Hi, I'm Vala" she says.

"My name is Tomin. How are you feeling?" he asks.

"A little confused, I don't know what happened," she confesses.

"The gods have sent you to me," Tomin replies.

"Ok, what method did they use?" she asks.

"I found you by the rings. You had lost consciousness," he says

"Well, I thank you for taking care of me," she says slowly.

"Only a fool would reject the gift that the gods had given them," Tomin says.

Vala has a strange feeling on her spine as he says the words.

Tomin smiles at her. "It is almost time for prostration. Do you feel well enough to have some food before I go?"

Vala nods her head. She's ravenously hungry. More hungry than she has ever been before in her life.

**One Month Later**

"I was impressed by your work," the man in the suit says opening the file, and looking across the table at Cassie. His words are kind, but his body language and tone are anything but.

"Thank you," she says. It's a class project. That's all. No reason to break out in a cold sweat just because the project is being graded by actual members of the business community.

"So impressive that I can't believe it was done by a student," the businessman continues.

Oh no, did the man think that she cheated? Because she didn't…well, she had cheated with James, but she had never cheated in school.

"How set are you in finishing you degree?" the man asks.

Was he going to get her kicked out of school? He couldn't could he? Not without some kind of evidence. Evidence that he was not going to find, because she hadn't cheated. "Very much sir."

"Well, that's too bad," the man says pushing back his chair a bit to study her, "because I was going to offer you a job."

"What?" Cassie says in shock.

"I've own a chain of coffee shops. Every single one of them is making loads of money. Except for one of them. I need a new manager."

"I don't want to take someone else's job."

"No, you won't be. The fool is going to be losing his job whether or not you take this one. Since you are so set on finishing school I suppose we could work around your schedule. If you were willing to cut back on classes, and take your time. We would of course make it worth your time as far as the money goes. Assuming you're as good at being a manager as you are were at this project."

"I appreciate the chance, sir," she says.

"Good," the businessman says closing her folder, and walks out of the room.

"So I take it this means that I got an A," Cassie mutters to the empty room.

**A Week Later**

A baby?

How could Vala be about to have a baby?

She sighted to herself as she pulled away from the bucket where she had lost her lunch, again. This planet was badly in need of some basic pluming infrastructure. Say what you want about Daniel's planet, but they did know how to get rid of bodily wastes.

The mention of Daniel's name, even in her thoughts, is almost enough to unwind her. If she was on his planet. If this was his baby….Hell, if this was anyone's baby, it wouldn't be so scary.

She remember once, when she was a little girl, that monster of a step-mother Adria had left her alone, again. She'd fallen off the cupboard when she was cleaning, and her arm had hurt so bad that she'd known that if it wasn't broken surely something bad had happened to it. The worst part hadn't been the pain, although that was just barely bearable. The worst part had been the cold terror of knowing that there was something horribly wrong, and not being able to put her finger on exactly what it was.

Or what to do about it. She was as clueless today as she'd been then. Eventually, she'd walked next door, and the women had sprinted it up, and taken her to the healer who set it properly, and given her herbs for the pain.

What is the proper treatment for a baby of unknown origin? An impossible baby? A miracle baby?

No, not that. Not for her kid. She understood why women had abortions. She even supported the right of them to do so. When you live a promiscuous life it is always something you have to think about.

Just not for her, or at least not again.

Here are some facts: It is forbidden for Goa'uld hosts to have children, especially by another Goa'uld host. Goa'uld, particularly those nicknamed 'the love goddess' like hers had been have lots of sex, often with other Goa'uld. The Goa'uld don't have any form of birth control.

You do the math.

A Goa'uld abortion was kinder than the back alley thing that Vala had seen on most of the planets she'd been to. Even kinder than the clean antiseptic one she'd held her friend's hand through once when she was a teenager. All the Goa'uld had to was give control of the body to the human, even for a second, and then…reassert itself.

A minute, an hour, a day after implantation, a tiny little bundle of cells lost it's grip, and disappeared forever.

She'd grieved for those babies, each one of them, until she'd lost count (and even after en masse the way you could grieve for an entire people slain by the Goa'uld).

This would be worse though, because, after making her sick for almost a week, this tiny thing inside of her stomach must be a lot bigger than a bundle of cells, and it was hers. At least she hoped so. In any case, after she carried it in her stomach for the better part of the year, it would be hers, even if she didn't have anything to do with it's origins.

"Kid, you are so getting me burned at the steak, and I didn't even DO anything this time. You think if I was going to die for my sin I could have at least had the sin first," she mutters.

She puts her hand on her belly, and leans back against the door. She misses the adobe of her home, or the metal of the spaceships she'd lived in when she was Quedesh (or Quedesh was her), or even the plaster covered walls of the walls of Daniel's house. All of these would have given her some chill as she leaned against them. There was nothing better than a bit of cool when you've just been sick.

Plan wood offered no chill. They also threatened slivers.

"Don't fret little one, Mama isn't going to let them burn us. She just isn't sure exactly how to get around it just yet," she says patting her stomach comfortably. She wonders when babies grow ears. She should probably figure that out so she has a deadline to stop saying terrifying things like that.

Or to start swearing in another language at the very least.

Suddenly there is the sound of a man walking across the floorboards with a limp.

Yes, Tomin, that is her answer. Of course, it was so simple that she wonders why she didn't think of it sooner.

Her mind supplies the answers without her trying, because Tomin is a good man, and she doesn't love him. He deserves better. Because it feels like she is betraying the one that she really does love.

What does that matter? This is about survival!

She puts a big smile on her face, and heaves herself off the ground. "Tomin!" she says with more excitement than her exhausted body actually feels.

**A Week Later**

Shelby picks up the phone, and hears the voice of Tamara's best friend, Niki, on the other end. "I'll get Tamara," she says, but she hears a voice calling her back to the line before she can call to her sister.

"No, I wanted to talk to you. It's so unfair that you're not letting Tam go to the dance! You're like the strictest mom ever, and you're not even a mom. Well, you are, but not like her mom or whatever," the girl says.

Shelby blinks in surprise, she hasn't heard anything about a dance, but she lets her sister's friend finish the scolding before giving her a polite goodbye. Then she walks into her sisters room, and says, "So, why exactly don't you want to the dance? Niki informed me that it was the first one of your high school career, and the event of the season."

"She got that out of some old book," Tamara says slamming her algebra textbook closed.

"Well, that doesn't automatically make it a lie," Shelby points out, "What's going on?"

"I just didn't want to go."

"Are you fighting with your friends?" Shelby asks sitting down on the bed next to her little sister, and realizing at the thought, that she isn't so little anymore.

Tammy sighs, seeing that there is no way she is going to get out of this without spilling her guts, so she admit, "It's the whole boy girl thing."

"Ok, what part of it?" Shelby asks.

Tammy just shakes her head, "The whole thing. I don't want it. Ever," the last words is firm, and definite, and more than a little bit terrified.

"You are pretty young to be declaring forever," Shelby says softly.

"It just sucks, you know, the end of all of this boy girl thing. I know it, and they don't, and I just don't want to participate in the game when I know it's just headed for…pain."

"Are we talking about sex right now?" Shelby asks in surprise.

Tammy nods.

"Oh honey, sex does not always suck."

"It…hurt," Tammy whispers.

"Well of course it did! When some bastard takes advantage of you when you are a little kid, and he's supposed to protect you it sucks, it hurts, it's awful. When you're in love, and you are married, and you actually WANT to have sex it's amazing."

Tammy blushes, she's finding out more about her guardian's love life than she meant to.

"That being said, I think you're a long way away from sex, but a high school dance isn't about that, or at least it shouldn't be. It's about getting dressed up with your girlfriends, and giggling over a guy, and being awkward, and giving up on the boys, and swing dancing with your best friend, and then being asked to dance by the dreamiest guy in school."

"That sounds like a Disney movie."

"It was my first high school dance," Shelby corrects.

Tammy crinkles up her nose, "It can really be good?"

"Are we talking about sex or school dances? Never mind, both. One of them you get to find out about tonight. When does this thing start? Do we have time to do your hair? I'm thinking very fluffy."

Tammy glances at the clock, and shakes her head.

"Ok, than how about you borrow my nice dress, eh? And Becky's sparkly headband."

"You don't think that's a bit little kiddish?" Tammy asks.

"No, I think it's a little fairy tale, and if you complain I'm going to cover you with sparkles."


	104. Part 10 Chapter 4

Vala is lucky that this is one of those planets that has a very fast engagement. After you say you're going to marry, sew you sew a few things for around the house, and then you bake a couple of cakes, and then one day after Prostration everyone stays over for the three-hour wedding.

She's on her knees the whole time, and she is pretty sure that the incense is going to make her throw up. Half way through, all she can think about is not peeing in her simple gown.

How is she going to keep a person she lives with from noticing that she's already pregnant?

The Prostration ends, and her new husband helps her stand. She looks into his eyes, and sees that he loves her. That makes everything worse.

-0-

Usually Vala would disappear somewhere and put on sexy clothes, and go back to her husband's room. That's how Quesh lured her men, when she didn't have to resort to Nisma, at least.

There isn't another room to change in, unless she changes in the sunlit kitchen or living room. These people don't have a bathroom, they also don't have sexy underwear.

So she just goes into a corner of the room, and removes her dress. She hangs it on the peg, and turns to her husband. She tries not to shiver under his gaze or the air on her body.

"Do you need nightclothes?" he asks, trying to look into her eyes, though they're focused much lower.

"Am I going to need them?" she asks seductively.

He blushes, and breaks eye contact with her boobs.

A horrible thought occurs to her. What if the injury that makes Tomin limp also mean no sex? Then he would never believe the baby was his. Also, she would feel pretty stupid standing in front of him naked.

"Tomin," she says, walking toward her husband, and putting a hand on her shoulder, "What's wrong?"

"These thoughts, they have been forbidden so long, it is hard to adjust to them not being forbidden anymore."

"There are other things that are not forbidden any longer," she reminds him.

Even with this permission he doesn't move.

She starts a kiss. Gentle and sweet at first, and then growing in intensity until she doesn't feel weird running her hands across his back, taking his clothes off piece by piece.

His blush covers his whole body. She hooks a leg around his body in order to bring the most interesting parts of their body into close contact. This causes Tomin to lose his balance, and they both crash to the floor.

"I am so sorry!" she exclaims climbing off him.

"It's ok," Tomin says.

"No it's not, I practically attacked you on our wedding night," she helps him sit on the edge of the bed, "Look, Tomin, I would understand if you didn't want to do anything tonight."

It's a generous offer, because if he agrees her, baby will have to be one more day 'early'.

"No, I want to. I'm sorry that I do not have more to offer you," Tomin says hanging his head.

"Are we talking size here? Because I really believe it does not matter," Vala lies, with a quick glance at his still-clothed crotch.

"I mean the curse of the Ori. A strong man would be able to hold his wife," he says, looking sad.

"Oh, Tomin, that was my fault. I have to be more sensitive to this whole thing," she says, waving his concern away.

"I hope that you will not come to wish you had married a whole man."

"You are more man than anyone I have ever known," she lies. There was… just one that was better.

He leans forward and kisses her. She lightly eases him back in the bed, and slowly, carefully, the two of them make love.

-0-

"Would you guys please stop it!" the waitress across the room at three children.

Cassie puts on her best manager face, "What seems to be the problem?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, my day care lady is sick today," the waitress says, looking frantic and running across the room to pull a child down in each arm.

"It's ok, I understand, family is important," she says, grabbing the third child. The girl lets out an inhuman scream.

"What honey, stranger danger?" she asks the girl.

"I'm so sorry, she's autistic. She won't put up with being touched."

The girl starts making laps around the room, screaming.

Cassie considers. This changes things. Having three kids running around the coffee shop is bad enough. One who is screaming and can't understand directions is something different.

"Maybe you should take them home. I'll cover your shift," Cassie offers.

"Right," the girl nods her head, but Cassie detects what looks like the start of tears as she goes to the door.

She tries to remember the girl's name. Right, it was Renee, but her friends call her, "Nea, what's wrong?"

"I understand, ma'am. Only, it's hard. I gotta pay rent and buy food whether I work this shift or not…"

"Go home, and you'll get full pay," Cassie says.

"Really?" Wanda looks confused.

"Really," Cassie assures her.

"Thank you, ma'am," the woman says, impulsively giving Cassie a quick hug before she makes her exit.

The girl stops mid circle, and launches herself at Cassie, wrapping her in a hug, no doubt in imitation of her mother.

"I'm so sorry ma'am, she's never done that before," her startled mother says before the family leaves.

It's an odd feeling Cassie has, then, of being claimed by a stranger.

**One Week Later**

The weather in Colorado, even in late December, is some days warm enough for outdoor activities. Jack would probably be willing to barbeque in a blizzard, but the weather for their Christmas get-together is nice enough that everyone else is willing to endure the outdoors. It's the first time in years that the whole clan has been in the same place at the same time. Often they splinter into groups which all head into different room of a house, ever since they got too big for one house to hold.

Jacob's eye surveys over the crowd with as much satisfaction as if they were all his blood. He's had a hand, at least a small one, in the raising of every child here. As the only adult without a job, at least since Shelby when back to work last fall, he's always the go-to for emergency child care in this group.

Cassie, at twenty, is really too old to be called a kid. But, if he's still going to consider his daughter a kid, he supposes the girl wouldn't be harmed by it. She is sitting at the adult table, rocking Jenny in her arms. The two-year-old is gently going down for her nap, not something her mother was able to manage despite trying her hardest.

Rya'c's girlfriend, almost twenty herself and halfway through her freshman year of college, has the other youngster, Drew, in her arms. Either she is less skilled at the task of child pacification, or Drew is fussier. The question is settled when Rya'c takes the child in his strong arms, and stills him with a few bounces.

You've gotta love SG-1 kids, they just have a special touch.

The three-year-old twins have no thought of being put down for a nap. Lexi and Luke and Will are playing some game whose rules seem to be a state secret between the three of them. It involves a lot of running, and sometimes requires crawling under tables. Once in a while they stop to pop some fruit from a bowl into their mouths, and obedient to the adults around them, don't run until they've finished chewing. Although it's unclear whether or not the eating of the fruit is actually part of the game or not.

Tammy, Emma (who was borrowed back from her father for the night, as she always was for team nights), and Ty are sitting under a tree having some sort of earnest, although not serious, discussion. Every so often, laughter breaks out from that crowd.

Becky Lynn and Hannah are jumping rope.

The adults, as is almost always the case in any gathering of more than ten or so people, are split into two groups. The men are telling stories, either of the war or fishing variety, based on the way they try to top each other both with volume and with hand gestures.

It's harder for him to guess what the women are doing, because he's never been invited to that side of a party before.

It suddenly strikes him that there is so much to know. That he's lived all of this time, and yet he's managed to discover almost nothing about the world.

He finds a choke in his throat when he thinks about the news he is going to have to give them, all of them, before long. Not today, though, not this week even; he's not going to ruin Christmas with bad news.

It was his own fault really, he'd made the mistake no soldier ever should, he confused the battle with the war.

He just didn't think he was going to have to face cancer more than once, even though the statistics said he would.

"You ok, Jacob?" Daniel asks, having walked across the lawn to see why the older man was standing by himself, looking wistful.

"Of course," he nods his head, and goes to take his place on the bench of men. Like he said, this could wait.

-0-

"Aggravation, rehabilitation, aggravation, this is how we play…" Tammy and Emma say, slapping their hands together across the picnic table.

Jack lets out a sigh as these proceedings stop the flow of food, right before the meat gets to his place, "Aggravation is about right," he says.

They take the hint, and drop the hands to their lap, after, of course, finishing the verse.

"So how is the new job going?" Amy asks Cassie.

"It's hard. The place was badly-managed for a long time, and locality is horrible, but we're building up clientele," she responds.

"Any boys on the horizon?" Jack asks.

"No," Cassie says, spooning some potato salad on her place. She is shocked that it happened already, that transition from being warned that boys were evil to the hints that she should get one. Is she that old already?

"I have a boy on the horizon," Olivia announces.

Ty, Emma, and Tammy are the only people who don't looked shocked.

"Excuse me?" her father says.

"Oh, it's nothing official. I wouldn't start to date anyone without your express approval, your royal highness. I just mean that I think someone I like might like me."

"How is that going to work?" Olivia's sister inquires, "Doesn't everyone at your school think you're dating Ty? He's not going to be very likely to ask you out if he thinks you are already involved with someone else."

"Oh, Ty, and I have just decided to break up. We've already dated way longer than most people are age have. The break-up will clear the way for him!" Olivia says cheerfully.

"Who is this him you speak of?" Daniel and asks while Teal'c begins giving the girl a suspicious glare.

"He's a good kid, I swear," Tammy says.

"How do you know him? She's two years behind you in school. She's not interested in someone in high school, is she?" Daniel says with something that is close cousins to panic.

"No, he's just an eighth grader, but this is the kind of kid you'd known even if he was a couple of grades away from you. He's always getting recognized for some academic quiz team or volunteer work or something. His name is Teddy Green," Tammy offers.

"You're going to let me meet him before you officially date, right?" Daniel asks.

Olivia nods her head, and the conversation turns to different topics. Daniels' mind doesn't turn away from the topic though. A cold dread is in his stomach as he considers one horrible fact. Cassie was sixteen when she started to date, and a year later she was having sex.

What did it mean if Olivia was only twelve when she began to date?

If he thought it would work, he would forbid her all together. That hadn't gone well with his oldest daughter, though. He wouldn't be able to bear it if he pushed Olivia away from him the same way he had Cassie. True, in the last couple of months, he and Cassie had gone a long way in repairing their relationship, but he didn't want to have to travel the same path with his younger daughter.

Thank goodness the rest of his kids were boys! Two girls were as much as he could handle!


	105. Part 10 Chapter 5

Everyone was covered in a sticky layer of marshmallow. That was the natural consequence of giving s'mores to toddlers. Drew, Lexi, and Luke run around the campfire with the hands outstretched, enjoying the way that the adults flinch and pull away from their reach.

"Why don't you tell a story?" Cassie asks her dad, by way of distracting the little kids and keeping her hair bun (she'd learned to put her hair in a bun when the SG-1 group was getting together) free of the sticky mess.

"Right, a story," Daniel says. He knows that everyone here wants some funny thing that happened once to SG-1, a favorite at such gatherings. However, he can't tell something like that in the presence of Amy. She's been around the SG crowd long enough that she knows all is not as it seems, but she doesn't quite know what makes them so different from other people.

Rya'c picks up on the reason for the pause, and stands up, offering Amy his hand, "Would you like to accompany me on a walk?"

"Behave with honor, son," Teal'c says in passing. He's beyond the point of giving his son more than reminders. In his view, his son is done. He is unfailingly proud of Rya'c in his studies, in his relationships, and in the way he helps keep the family afloat. Both he and Shelby started to treat Rya'c like an adult, slowly, over the last couple of years, until it was almost complete.

"Indeed," his son replies, completely unaware that this, as well as many other thing he said and did, were imitations of his father.

As soon as the two are out of earshot, a rowdy re-telling of SG-1's favorite hits begins.

"I didn't meant to do this tonight," Amy says.

"What?" Rya'c asks turning toward her.

"I applied for something a while back. I didn't think I'd get it in a million years, but I did."

"Good for you, what is it?" Rya'c asks, genuinely excited for her, which just makes what she had to say a whole lot harder.

"It's a year overseas."

"Over what sea?" Rya'c asked. He may be used to most parts of the culture, but he still gets confused ever know and again, by a turn of phrase.

"I mean in another country. I won't actually have to cross any sea to get there, just fly in a plane for a really long time. It's in Argentina."

Rya'c tries to hide his sadness, he knows that he's supposed to be happy for her. A good boyfriend would be happy for her. "I'm going to miss you very much," he says, letting the sorrow get into his voice more than he meant to.

She sighs, "I think we should break up."

"Why? You're coming back. I will wait your return; it will only be a year."

"That's not the problem, not really. I'm an anthropology major. Now, I know that some of them end up holed up in some college or doing studies on urban youth or something. I don't want to be one of those people, though. I want to go out and see the world; the whole world. I want to stay in a culture just long enough for the culture shock to wear off, and then I want to go to a whole new culture. You are this stable, upstanding citizen. Which is great, don't get me wrong. I just can't picture you following me around the world. You're going to want to stay close to your folks, and you're going to expect me to have kids someday. I don't want those things. I don't think you could ever want the things that I do. I just don't see any future in store for us."

"I think that you are wrong. Dr. Jackson is an anthropologist."

"Well, not really. He has a degree in anthropology, and he's smart," Amy knew, because she'd had many conversations with him, "But he works for the military. It's not like he goes out there, and actually does anthropology. It would be worse than being trapped in some academic library."

"I don't think you can even begin to imagine all the things that he has seen and explored. They travel farther than you ever will," Rya'c says.

"They aren't gone long enough for that," Amy says.

"You only think that because you don't understand how they travel," he replies.

Amy shakes her head, thinking to herself that this was by far the most desperate way to stave off a break-up that she had ever seen.

"Come with me," he says, grabbing her hand, and she allows herself to be dragged one more time by the man that was her first love.

In the darkness, the people around the campfire don't see them approach. They hear Jack is saying, "This planet had these little green guys…"

"They were green because they contained chlorophyll," Sam puts in.

"Right, so they were like these walking plants, or whatever. Only, they didn't look like plants, they look like the Great Gazoo, you know, from the Flintstones, complete with the helmet."

Daniel catches the chuckle then, "So Jack here goes around calling them Gazoo, all of them. They just keep turning to him, and saying, 'Bless you'. They think he's sneezing!"

Everyone burst into laughter, including, unfortunately, the two that are hiding in the bushes. The group turns to them in shock.

"Rya'c," his father reproaches, and the kid is afraid that he has not 'behaved with honor', as his father told him to a couple of minutes ago.

"How much did she hear?" Jack asks, standing up and looking like a general, as he rarely does during team nights.

"She needed to understand the benefits of working for the Stargate program," Rya'c says, looking them full in the face without a trace of remorse.

"Oh, really, and why would that be?" Jack challenges.

"If she does not understand these things, she is going to leave me," Rya'c says with enough emotion that he feels shamed in front of both his family, and the girl that he loves.

"Rya'c… I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt you, I just wanted to see the world," she says, not understanding what the strange science fiction tale that she just witnessed being told would have to do with the reality of her break-up.

"What if you could see a lot more than just the world?" Daniel asks with a sparkle in his eye.

"Classified," Jack warns.

"Come on, honey, she's as good as family," Sam says, "Ok, you've got to keep this quiet, but…" she begins, and for the next two hours the whole secret of the Stargate program is told with colorful embellishments provided by the children of the god slayers.

-0-

"Are you alright?" Shelby asks as she drives Amy home. Her step-son still hasn't learned to drive.

Amy nods her head. She sighs, "He understands why I'm still going, right?"

Shelby's eyes sparkle, "Yes, I think he gets it. He just wanted you to know that the two of you could still be together, if you wanted it. It could be just a temporary separation, if that's what you wanted it to be."

"I have no idea what I want," Amy admits.

"Well, that's ok too, you're young yet."

**A Few Days Later**

A three-year-old, at two in the morning two nights before Christmas, and a pile of presents under the tree. I bet you think you know how this story is going to end. Nope, sorry, you're wrong. Little Lexi Dunn is not about to open any presents. She's got other ideas in her mind.

With a sharpie, she looks carefully for all the "L"s. She knows that this is how her name starts. She doesn't know that this is also the way that her brother's name starts. So when she tries to mark all of her presents with a giant "X", his get caught up in the mix as well.

Teal'c may have started sleeping when he lost his symbiote, but he still doesn't sleep all the way through the night. He's prone to three or four hour bouts with a half hour or more of wakefulness in between. Maybe it's a side effect of the tretonin, or maybe it's a habit left over from when he's a Jaffa, or maybe it's just the way that his body is set up.

He walks into the living room, and catches Lexi in the act. She has almost as much sharpie on her face and hands as she managed to get on the boxes, he feels lucky that none got on the floor or her pajamas. At least skin cells fall off after a while.

"What are you doing?" he asks in the booming voice she knows means she's in trouble.

She hangs her head, and whispers, "Fixing."

"Fixing what?"

"Wrong name!" she says stubbornly.

He takes the package from her hand. It happens to be one of her brother's. "Are you trying to take all of your brother's presents?"

Lexi is confused and frustrated by this conversation. "Wrong name, I Allie," she says pointing to herself. This action is done, unfortunately, by the hand which is holding the sharpie.

So much for her pajamas being unaffected.

**The Next Day**

Last Christmas was the worst Christmas that any of the Jackson's had ever had. Well, the boys had not noticed as much. If Santa brought the presents, and they got cookies; they were quite content. Christmas had been long enough after Janet's death that Daniel had been back in the world of the living, back in the world of trying. He had made Christmas dinner exactly like she used to, except everything tasted just a little bit different. He had carried on all of her family traditions, only there hadn't been any family to carry them on with.

Of course, they'd gone to the SG-1 events like they always had, but they hadn't flown to Janet's sister's house (whose turn it was to host the holiday dinner). They'd gotten the invite, but Daniel just hadn't felt like the belonged. They were HER parents, and she wasn't alive anymore.

To his daughters, it felt like they had not only lost a mother, but aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and all sorts of other relatives that are not close enough to have a name of their own.

This Christmas promised to be a no less distressing affair.

Then suddenly, on Christmas Eve, the doorbell rings. When Olivia goes to open it, she sees her Grandmother.

"I'm so sorry dear, I know it's unbelievably rude to come on Christmas Eve without an invitation. Only, we couldn't be sure of you showing up at anyone's house, so we decided that we would bring Christmas to you." Behind her Grandmother, Olivia can see all the family members that usually attend these gatherings.

She puts a hand over her mouth in absolute shock.

Daniel comes in from the kitchen at the sound of coats being shed in the entry way. He sees the crowd, and knows what is going on without any explanation. "I appreciate it, I just don't know what we're going to feed you all."

"Oh, we've got the menu looked after," his mother-in-law says, just as two uncles bring the turkey through the door.

"How on Earth did you cook a turkey?" Olivia asks, knowing that no-one else in the family lived within three states.

"One of us got a hotel with stove. To be honest, we weren't quite sure how welcome we were going to be. We didn't want to end up not getting Christmas dinner at all," an aunt explains bashfully.

"Well, of course you're welcome," Daniel says.

"You didn't come to Christmas," his mother-in-law says with what can only be described as a quiver of the lip.

"I didn't know that you wanted me, not really," Daniel says softly, realizing, a year to late, how stupid that was.

"Not want you? You think we go sending invitations to people we don't like? Trust me, dear, we are not that polite. You're family. So you come to Christmas," Janet's grandmother says with a firm nod of her head.

"I wasn't sure that you would still think of me as family," he says softly.

"What? You're crazy! When you married my daughter, you became my son. That hasn't stopped, and these children," Janet's mother says, picking up Drew, "Have certainly not stopped being my grandchildren. "He's grown so much," she says, and can't quite stop the tears.

Drew has no idea what is going on, but he understands that the woman holding him is sad, so he wraps his baby arms around her, and gives her a giant hug.

"Thank you, love," she says kissing him on his cheek.

It's still a sad Christmas, for everyone. Whenever you lose someone, there is always a choke in the back of your throat, and holidays, especially the first few, make it come more to the forefront. It's easier though, when you start to get the choke in your throat, if you can look around the room and see other people who are just as choked up as you are.

It hurts a whole lot less.


	106. Part 10 Chapter 6

**The Next Day**

Jacob had opted for the treatment. This decision was perhaps more based on the fact that it had saved him the last time than the odds of it saving him this time. Still, he wanted to go down with a fight. He didn't want to go quietly into that good night, as they say.

If he wanted the treatment to have any real chance of working, he had to start it as soon as possible. That meant before Christmas, and that meant before he told his family. He had not realized how much having someone who loved him by his side had helped him the first time that he was sick. It really made all the difference in the world.

The treatment had come two days before Christmas, and by the time Christmas rolled around, the effects were pretty dire.

He told them that he had the stomach flu, and they believed him. Sometimes, people's minds choose to ignore the obvious.

Emma saw it, though. She and her father were spending Christmas with the O'Neills, as they had for every holiday since her father's return. When Jacob left the room for the third time, she followed him.

She pushed the bathroom door open, and rubbed slow circles on his back. He'd thrown up enough, mostly in the middle of the night, that this was only a bit of bile, and mostly dry heaves. He thought he wanted to be left alone to his misery, but found in surprise, once she was there, that he desperately wanted her to stay.

"It's back, isn't it?" she asks the one question, and there is no doubt what the 'it' is.

He nods as he leans away from the porcelain.

"Worse?" she asks.

He nods again.

She's silent for a whole minute. One minute of private grief before she is able to offer him some kind of comfort. "Well," she says with a smile, "You've beat it once before. You'll do the same this time. A person as good as you couldn't possibly die."

She's naïve, Jacob knows. He's been to war, and he knows that it is not the good person who survives. It's not the strongest or the wisest or the most moral. The one who survives is just the one who survives.

He nods his head again, because he's not going to rob her of her hope. She might need that, later on, to make the end a bit less bitter.

**Two Weeks Later**

It has been a long time since Cassie was surprised to see three squirrely children sitting in the booth of the coffee shop. There was really nothing she could do about it, of course. Nae's daycare provider had quit, and it was not what you would call easy to find someone to look after a child with autism.

Of course, she could have fired Nae. The flaw in this was that Nae was really good at her job, far better than anyone she could get to replace her. Cassie really didn't need that kind of weight on her heart either; she didn't need to be the reason those three adorable little children didn't have enough food to eat.

In any case, Cassie had found ways to cope. She had bought a CD player. Well, two, actually. The first one had died on the first night of its use. Aliyah, for that was the name of the six-year-old with autism, had loved the tape recorder. She'd been completely mesmerized by it. Well, not so completely that she had been able to sit still for more than ten minutes. When she'd gotten up to run around, the CD player, still attached to her by earphones, had crashed to the floor and shattered. She'd held it in her arms like precious thing, and grieved for it.

The next night, Cassie had bought her a new one. This time, when she got up to run around, she had carried it carefully in her hand. There was no danger of the second one crashing like the first.

It played soothing classical music, and it was probably the biggest reason why the times when Aliyah got up and ran were farther and farther apart.

In addition to the tape player, Cassie had bought Aliyah and her two sisters, the four-year-old Keisha and the two-year-old Jayla, all sort of distracting things. Books, crayons, coloring books, dominos, blocks, and other such tabletop games and toys.

"You don't need to do that; I can take care of my own," Nae lies.

"It's a business decision," Cassie lies back.

As the days press on, the business becomes more successful, and easier to run. Cassie goes from working either at school or her job every hour of the day to having many leisure hours. She finds herself spending most of those leisure hours taking three precious children to the library, the park, anywhere out of the shop where their mother works, and where they spend all together too much time.

"You don't need to do that; I can take care of my own," Nae lies.

"I want to," Cassie says. She's known since she was sixteen that if she ever had children, those children would die on their own sixteenth birthday. She'd thought that meant that she could never be a mother.

Now something is waking up inside of her, telling her that that isn't true. That there are plenty of kids who need someone as badly as she needs her adopted parents, and she could be a mother to them. Even if they never call her mother. Even if she's just Cassie, mommy's boss.

Maybe someday, when her job, and her school, and her life are all settled, she will adopt some kids, someone who will be hers totally and completely.

**Two Weeks Later**

Vala had wondered for a while now if she should announce her pregnancy to her husband. She didn't have the courage for this, because of the dread of the questions which would follow. Perfectly natural questions like, "When can I except my child to enter the world?"

Questions whose answer would be a lie, because it wasn't his child.

So she waited, and just hoped that he would figure it out. He should have figured it out by now, considering the act that she was really four months pregnant. Her tall, thin frame and the fact that this was a first-time pregnancy helped with the deception a bit, and it wasn't until she neared four months that she began to have a bit of a bump. She could easily pass for a women in her third month.

Still, Tomin said nothing about it. He said nothing, but when they made love in the dark of the night, his hands spent more and more time upon the tiny mound.

Why didn't he mention it? Was he waiting for her to, in the same way she was waiting for him? Was he unhappy with the revelation? Was he suspicious? Did he just think she was getting fat? What was sex education like in Ori-land anyway? Did men have any understanding of pregnancy and women's bodies when they married?

Then one day after prostration, one of the other women in the village looked at Vala's tiny mound and said, "You're in the family way, yeah?"

Vala had nodded her head, and the women had pulled her into a hug. Over the woman's shoulder she could see her husband. His face was so deliriously happy that everything inside of her fell to wishing that it really was his baby growing inside of her womb.

He'd known that was pregnant, perhaps, but he wanted confirmation, was all.

When they were back in the house, alone, she thought that he would talk of it. She might have taken into consideration the fact that this was the man who only had sex in the dark, and still, after three months of marriage, couldn't say the word 'sex'. He never mentioned it. He only made sure that she had more fruit, and tried to spare her from even the lightest work.

"I'm fine," she'd tell him. Wincing to see her limping husband complete her own tasks in addition to his own. She couldn't make him stop. It was his way of telling her that he loved her, that he was happy, that he was grateful for the life growing inside of her.

Vala put her hand to her stomach, and was filled with even more fear. What was this thing within her? How had it come to be? Was it some side-effect of space travel? Would it come out with three heads or something else that would let Tomin know in an instant that it wasn't his?

She can do nothing about it but wait.

**One Week Later**

Cassie's coffee shop was doing so well that she got a raise. The kind of money that she as making now was almost enough to lure her away from college. The only thing that stopped her was her father's disapproval, and the fact that his disapproval had been right more often than it had been wrong.

As it was, she saved her money, and balanced school and work. Juggling with two balls wasn't all that hard.

It was only when the third ball, the bowling boll was added in, that things began to fall apart.

"Thank goodness you're here, Nae didn't show," the stressed worker shouts across the coffee shop as the bell above Cassie's head announces her presence.

"She didn't call?" Cassie asks.

"No, I tried to call, and no-one answered," the worker says.

Then Cassie dropped her first juggling ball. She as at work, her job was to make sure that this coffee shop ran smoothly, so she should have stayed and called someone into work, or filled in for them. But Cassie had more important things to do. There could very easily be three little children in danger.

When she gets to Nae's apartment, she barely pauses to pull the key out from under the mat, and let herself in.

"Nae, Nae!" she calls.

The house is empty, Cassie starts driving down the road to the coffee shop, a different way than she took the first time. She sees it, the accident, and her heart stops.

Aliyah is screaming for all that she is worth, and the EMT is calmly saying, "I just need to examine you, honey, I know you're scared but you need to hold still."

"She's autistic, let me," Cassie says, but the words were not necessary. As soon as Aaliyah sees her she launches herself into Cassie's arms. The girl is shaking, even though the day is warm. Apparently the fact that the EMT was trying to touch her wasn't the only reason that she was screaming.

"It's ok," Cassie says kissing her forehead. She can feel there is a problem with the way she shifts her weight, "There is something wrong with her leg," she whispers to the worker, who looks at it.

Cassie knows it's broken, a crash bad enough to break the leg of a little girl in a carseat…

"Where is the rest of her family?" she asks, a bit more frantically than she intended to. It's funny how different words can sound coming out of your mouth, especially when you're worried.

"They took the adult female and another child to the hospital already, the littlest is ok… we're waiting for child services. Are you family?"

The color of her skin more or less gave away that she wasn't. Then again, Shelby and Rya'c were family, and their skin colors were no more different than little girl's and her own.

"No, but I'm a friend of the family. Would there be any way that I could take care of them until their mother gets better?"

The panicked look in the EMT's eyes let her know that their mother is never going to be able to take care of them again. The EMT nods his head, though, so she at least gets to take the kids home with her.

"The little girl, Keisha, is she going to be ok?" she asks, breathless.

"Yes."

"I have to go to her, she's got to be terrified," Cassie says.

"You can ride in the ambulance with this one, she's going to have her leg set when we get to the hospital. The other one was pretty calm. She can get by without you for a while."

-0-

"You're home late," Daniel says as he hears the door open. When his face actually turns toward the sound he sees that she has two children on her hips, and another one sitting right beside her. "Are you babysitting?" he asks, knowing who the children must be based on their description.

"Something like that," Cassie turns to Olivia, "Can you watch them for a bit?" She sets Aaliyah down on the couch, and gives her sister a few instructions on how to keep from upsetting them.

"Sure," Olivia says, even though she can tell that things were serious, and she wants to follow out here, and find out what is going on.

"What's wrong?" Daniel asks as soon as they make their way out of earshot. He has caught onto the serious mood of the moment as well.

"Rae died," she says.

"Oh, God," he says pulling her into a hug. "So you're looking after them until family comes."

"Rae's family disowned her after she had a baby out of wedlock, the first time."

"But surely now…." Daniel begins.

"I'm trying, but I don't think so," Cassie says.

Daniel fidgets. He remembers his time in foster care, "That's hard. Are we going to be allowed to keep them for a while before they go to foster care? It would be better if they grieved with people they knew."

"I was thinking more like forever," Cassie says.

"You want me to adopt three children? Cassie, I already have four children, I'm not going to make it seven. I'm sorry."

"I wasn't talking about you adopting them," she says.

Daniel stares at her confused for a long second before he realizes what he means. "You?"

She nods.

"You're a child."

"You only have to be above eighteen in order to adopt."

"Cassie, you're in college, and working…" he says.

"I'm going to have to drop out of college, but I have enough money to support myself and them. I mean, it won't be a lot, but their mom worked minimum wage, and I'm doing way better than that."

"You are not ready to raise three kids," Daniel says.

Cassie pauses, trying to find the words to explain to her position to her father, "You know, there isn't as much difference between how she ended up with three little girls, and what I did."

"So this is penitence for having sex when you were a teenager? No, you got out of that unscathed. You're not going to suffer for her sins."

"That's not what I meant. Those kids are no-one's punishments. I just mean… you wouldn't have kicked me out if I came home pregnant when I was sixteen, would you have?"

Daniels pauses, "No, of course not, but this is different. You're choosing this."

"Their mother chose them, too. In much the same way I'm choosing them. She got to choose to be their mother or they wouldn't exist. I choose to be their mother or they end up in foster care."

"This is different, Cassie; they're not your kids."

"I love them, Dad. I know them. They love me, and trust me. Aliyah isn't going to trust just anyone."

"Someone will take care of them."

"Dad, you didn't do well in foster care, and neither did Olivia. You were both well-adjusted, smart little kids. What about them? They need me."

"You cannot give up your life for them!" Daniel insists.

"What if I _want_ to give up my life for them? What if I need to? This might be the only kids I ever have."

"You've given up on love and marriage already? You're only twenty years old."

"Even if I get married, I'm not going to have kids."

"Is there some medical thing I don't know about?" Daniel asks, immediately realizing how silly that was. They had the worst fight of their entire relationship when he'd found her birth control pills.

"The retrovirus. Any kids I had would have it. With the Goa'uld gone, that would mean that they would die in their sixteenth year. I'm not about to do that to anyone. I'd accepted a long time ago that I was never going to be a mother. These last couple of months, being around the kids, I'd decided that I want to be a mother. That means I'll have to adopt, so why not these ones?"

"You're too young," Daniel says.

"Then I'll grow up," she says.

He smiles, accepting the crazy situation for what it is, "Ok, then how about, 'because I'm too young to be a grandfather'."

She pulls him into a hug, "Thank you, Daddy!" Then she pulls away, and lets him in on the plans that she's been making for a while. "I'm going to move out. I just didn't have time today. I've been dealing with hospitals and work and taking care of them. I'll look for a place soon."

"Not too soon; you're going to need a little help," he says.

"I'm also going to need a little room. My bedroom was not really designed with four people in mind. I think I'd be willing to accept help even after I get my own place, though."


	107. Part 10 Chapter 7

Cassie walks back into the living room to find Aaliyah doing circles around her broken leg with the good one.

"Don't walk on it!" Olivia says with distress, trying to get the girl to stop without actually touching her.

Jayla is making her hungry whining noise, probably because she didn't eat anything at the hospital when the rest of them did. Keisha is just staring up at her with big scared eyes which seems to indicate that she knows more about the whole business than the other two.

"Let's go get you some food, huh? Crackers?" she asks the little girl who nods.

"They're staying with us for a while, aren't they?" Olivia says meaningfully.

"I'll be moving out before too long."

"What, so you get dad to take them in, and then you take off? When are you going to grow up?" Olivia sneers, forgetting to be subtle around the young children.

"The children and I are all going to leave. I'm the one that's adopting them," Cassie whispers.

Olivia stares at her sister. Was it possible that her sister had grown up without her noticing it? Was this what growing up looked like? Or was this this another one of her sister's crazy plans that was going to break the heart of everyone around her?

"I can feed her, if you like," Olivia says, picking up the girl; was it a niece, then? She felt pretty young to have a niece.

"Thank you," Cassie says, putting her arms around Liyah, and the small child melts into her arms.

**The Next Day**

** "**We've got a team coming over tonight, do you want me to cancel?" Daniel says.

"You still think I'm going to change my mind about keeping them?" Cassie says, stating the only reason her confused mind can grasp for him not wanting to introduce people to her kids.

"I wondering how well the kids are going to handle it," Daniel says looking at his… granddaughter, who sat down on the floor, and started rocking back and forth the minute he entered the room. That is only one unfamiliar person, he can't imagine what would happen if there was a whole house full of unfamiliar people.

"It will be ok; if she gets too overwhelmed, we can go somewhere by ourselves. They are her family now, she might as well meet them."

-0-

"Jack, I haven't got a whole lot of time. I just wanted to call and warn you, and I would like it if you could pass the word on to the rest of the families," Daniel whispers on the phone.

"Ok, what is with all the secrecy?"

"Cassie would kill me if I told you. I'm a grandpa."

"What? I didn't' even know that Cassie was dating someone. Do I have to kick someone's butt?"

"No, she's not pregnant, thank God. She has been spending a lot of time with some kids. They belong to the person that she works with. That woman died in a car accident yesterday. Cassie is taking them in."

"Did you tell her she's too young to have kids?"

"She's too old to be told, Jack."

There is a long pause. "Well, Danny-boy, when we first met I would have bet that I'd be a grandpa a long time before you were."

"True, but the surprises have always been the best part of my life," Daniel says.

-0-

Jayla is a natural-born star. She is passed from lap to lap, playing patty cake and getting her stomach tickled. Aaliyah refuses to make eye contact or a sound, but she does remain pretty calm, except for the two occasions when Cassie goes out of her sight. Then she threw a tantrum.

Keisha doesn't want to be near Cassie, but she also doesn't want to be alone. Olivia goes over, and sits next to her.

"Hi."

"You're Cassie's sister?" the girl asks, in a voice that is only a half-step above a whisper.

"I am."

"I have sisters," the girl says.

"I know; they're very nice. You're very nice, too."

"Where is Cassie's mom?" the girl asks.

Everyone knew about Janet. It had been whispered around school before she'd gone back, and everyone associated with the SG-C before, "Our mother died, a while ago."

"Where is my mother?" Keisha says. Olivia looks into her eyes to see if she can get away with a lie without losing the little girl's faith. She can see that the girl has seen too much. She was in the car accident. She already knows what happened to her mother.

"She died, too," Olivia says.

A silent tear rolls down the girl's cheek, "How long until she stops being dead?"

"Never, honey; your mother is never going to come back," Olivia says softly.

"Why?"

Olivia is surprised by such a grown-up question form such a little girl. She doesn't try to answer it, because she knows that better people than her have tried and failed. She just takes the girl onto her lap, and holds her as she starts to cry.

Cassie comes quickly over. "What's wrong, honey?" But just than Liyah starts to wail (this was one of the two times Cassie got out of her sight). She looks apologetic, and the runs across the yard.

She didn't need to run, though, because Rya'c is already taking care of it. He has picked the little girl up, and his tossing her lightly in the air.

"She has a broken leg," Cassie scolds, taking the girl back.

"Motion is good for the development of motor skills; besides, a bit of flying through the air might keep her from trying to walk on it."

Liyah reaches her hand out to Rya'c, obviously wanting more of the fun, rather than staying in her stern guardian's grip.

"She likes you," Cassie says, surprised.

"Children often do," Rya'c says not, realizing that this is the kind of comment that most people would describe as prideful.

"You ever thought of babysitting?" Cassie says, almost as a joke. It's based on a real problem though, she's realized, ever since she first decided to take on the care of the children, that she is going to have to do something with them when she goes back to work. Her boss was nice enough to give her a week off in the wake of the tragedy, generous since it had caused almost as much chaos at work as at home, but she would have to go back. She was counting on her father to provide her with help, too, but he had a job, and she didn't want to rely on him forever.

"I have often considered securing some employment to offset the cost of my continuing education now that the children of my house are growing older, and the need for me is not as desperate at home as it has been on previous occasions."

"You're serious? You actually want a job?" she asks, allowing the squirming child to return to his arms. Aaliyah likes him, and she doesn't like just anyone. If he's actually willing, it would be amazing. Not everyone is willing to look after a child with a disability, and this would be very much like keeping it all in the family.

"Indeed; provided it would only be part time work. I need to maintain my grades, and continue to aid with the rearing of the twins until Tam and Bec are old enough to take over all of the responsibilities that I once had. I will have more time to devote to the job during the summer months after my graduation."

"That will be perfect, because Liyah will be out of school then. The other two I can take with me to check in with work if I really need to, but…"

"I understand," he says, smiling at the girl as she tugs at his arm when he stops swinging her.

"Ry'ac, what do they do with people with disabilities on your planet?" she asks.

"The Goa'uld heals most of the things which the people of Earth consider to be disabilities," he replies.

"Right, of course," she says, trying to imagine a world without blindness, or deafness, autism, mental illness, or even a broken leg.

"It is a colorless existence," he says.

**The Next Day**

Cassie wasn't sure if she should even bring the girl into school already. It had only been three days since her mother had died. She wasn't actually sure if the girl was capable of understanding something as abstract as death. Of course, Aaliyah knew that her mother wasn't with her, and that she hadn't been with her for a while. She probably had some understanding that her mother was injured and in pain, based on what she had seen during the car crash. Cassie just wasn't sure that you could understand something as abstract as death without having command of words, or some symbolic method of communication.

Perhaps, when enough time had passed, she would come to understand it, but Cassie secretly hoped not.

She carried Aaliyah into the school fireman-style. She had crutches, but no matter what she tried, she hadn't been able to get the girl to use them. If she was set down on her feet, inevitably she would just walk on her cast. Cassie has foreseen this problem, and asked the doctor about it. Just as she had suspected, it would result in a complicated healing time as well as the possibility of more time in the cast, both things that Cassie wanted to avoid.

She gets stares from other parents, but she doesn't care. She walks into the front office, being careful not to bump Liyah's legs against anything as she goes.

"I'm sorry, do you know where the special education room is?" she asks, her cheeks turning red and the utter ridiculous position she finds herself in. She's glad that Daniel had the day off, and is home with the younger girl's right now. This would be too much with them in tow.

The secretary gives her directions, and she walks down the hallway to a comfortable little room. A women who looks like she is just out of high school greets the little girl by saying, "Liyah! Liyah!"

The girl replies "Aa! Aa!" It's the closest thing to speech that she has heard since she met the girl, and she wonders what other magic happens in the school room.

"What happened, Liyah?" another women says from across the room.

Cassie feels awkward that the question is aimed at someone who isn't going to answer, "She broke her leg. There was a car accident… I'd like to share the rest with you in private, if that's possible."

The second woman nods, and leads her into a small room which contains little more than a desk, and phone.

"Aaliyah's mother died on Friday. I'm taking care of her and her two little sisters now," Cassie practically whispers when the door is shut.

"I am so sorry for your loss," the women says.

Cassie stiffens. All this time, she hadn't been thinking very much about HER loss. She had been thinking about the little girls' loss, but it was her lose, too, after a fashion, wasn't it?

"Thank you. I wasn't sure if I should bring her to school today or not. Really, I'm not sure how much she understands what happens to her. I'm sorry about carrying her in. I know that isn't proper, but she won't use the crutches, and really I don't know what else to do."

"It's all right," the women says with a smile, "I think we have a spare wheelchair downtown at the special education office that we could use until she learns to use her crutches or heals."

"I didn't think of that," Cassie says, sounding despondent.

"I went to four years of college to think of things like that. I know you must be really busy, but we usually do a sort of introduction for parents when they first come in. Explain how we work around here. Is there a time that would work for you?"

"I'm free now, but I'm sure you need time to plan…." Cassie begins.

"Now is perfect, have you ever heard of the PECS system?" the teacher asks.

Cassie shakes her head.

"It's a method of communicating for individuals that don't have a lot of language. Aaliyah uses it at school. We sent a system home, but I don't think the family was able to use it much. Would you be interested in one?"

"I don't want to put you through the trouble, I could probably find it in their apartment," Cassie says even though her stomach sinks at looking through the things there. It's a task that she is only going to be able to put off for two more week though, at least unless she's willing to pay rent on it, or worse yet, live there. The place is small, and dirty, and in the bad part of town. The real reason Cassie doesn't want to live there though, is because she feels like the place is haunted by a metaphorical ghost.

"It's not that much trouble. It's all on the computer. It will only take a bit of work to put it together. I'll send it home in a couple of days. For now, I want to give you a chance to see the system in action."

Aaliyah is ruffling through a binder full of pieces of paper Velcroed to fabric. She pulls them off one by one, and sticks them on to another piece of Velcro, which she hands to one of the other women in the room.

"You want a teddy bear?" the women asks, again pausing as if she expects Aaliyah to respond. They do know that she can't talk, right? Cassie asks herself.

It's as if the teacher reads her mind, "Acting as if you expect a non-verbal child to talk is one of the best ways of increasing the chances that they will talk. Of course, while we're waiting for her to speak, we're also giving her other methods to communicate. That's what the PECS system is for – using pictures to ask for things. It prevents a lot of behaviors like tantrums. If you can't ask for what you need any other way, you are going to do it with behavior."

The worker has handed over a teddy bear in the absence of Aaliyah asking for it. Then she asks, "What do you have?"

Aaliyah reaches over, and touches the picture on the strip which is s till in the hand of the worker.

"You have a teddy bear? Fuzzy teddy bear."

The teacher walks up with a different strip. It has three places to attach a Velcro picture under each is written the words "first" "next" "then". The teacher picks a picture labeled "circle time" to put in the first box, one labeled "book" to put in the second, and puts one labeled "worksheet" in the third.

She points to each box, and says them. Then she hands Aaliyah her crutches. The girl actually stands up and attempts to use them. Although it's a clumsy attempt, it's the best she's had since she got them.

"She listens really well to you," Cassie says in awe.

"It's only, because I'm speaking her native language of images," the teacher says, pointing to the pictures, "If you do, she'll listen just as well to you. What we just did was called a picture schedule. Kids with autism get really nervous when unexpected things happen. When you give them a list of events in a way they can understand it really helps them out. When it's the same list as it was a day before that helps them even more."

Liyah has joined the circle of kids, and much to Cassie's amazement is singing a song which puts the months of the year to the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

"I didn't think she'd ever said a word," Cassie says in shock.

"Oh, she loves singing!" the teacher says with glee. "She can memorize just about anything if you give it to her in the form of a song. Watch this," the teacher says, going over by Liyah.

"Who are you?" the teacher sings.

"Aaliyah," she answers back.

"How old are you?" the teacher sings to a different note.

"Six," she answers.

On, and one the exchanges went, giving address, phone number, and her classroom in the school.

"That's amazing! I've known her for almost a year, and I didn't know she was capable of anything like that."

"The fact that she can repeat back something that she's heard a bunch of times doesn't actually mean that she's understanding any of it, and most of this developed in the last couple of months."

Cassie spent most of the morning in the classroom of the girl she was just beginning to think about as her daughter. When she left she had yet one more ball to juggle – that of her daughter's private therapist. After that, most of what she said was in song. After that, she was always waiting for answers she knew she would not get. After that, she was always slowing down to get a response from a little Velcro book before they did anything (animal crackers fed one by one, waiting for the picture "more").

After that, Liyah found her voice.


	108. End of Part 10

**Four Days Later**

The first time Aaliyah spoke was the day that Cassie took the girl's to see the new apartment. The little girls took off running through the house, trying to claim the bedroom that was would be theirs. There were only three bedrooms, and the girls didn't seem to take Cassie into account in their reckoning as they squabbled for the best one.

They'd forgotten the PECS system in the car, and Aaliyah had planted herself firmly on the floor of the master bedroom, and said, "Aaliyah!"

"Is this Aaliyah's room?" Cassie asks.

Keisha lets out a chorus of "no fair's" which threaten never to end, and Jayla looks like she's about to work herself into a tantrum.

"I'm sorry, but this is actually MY room. Keisha and Liyah are so grown up that they are going to share the big girl room, and little Miss Jayla gets one all to her own."

**One Week Later**

The next time that Liyah speaks she doesn't even realize that she is doing it, and Cassie is afraid to point it out for fear it will make the girl stop. She jabbers to herself as she moves her belongings into the new room, naming each of the objects.

"Book."

"Teddy bear."

"Brush."

"Shirt."

Each and every word is said in a sing-song voice, and with a huge smile on her face.

That night at supper, when Liyah hands over the PECS proclaiming her request she adds the words to it. "I want chicken, please," she says in the same sing song voice. Cassie gives her a tiny piece, requiring the use of more language to get more. Each bite of her dinner is a reward for the spoken, "I want more chicken please," or "I want more bread, please," or the one whose repeated sounds made Keisha giggle every time, "I want more peas, please."

When the words started coming, everything got easier. She started to listen more, especially when she could run her fingers across the request in solid form. Her bathroom accidents disappeared, tooth brushing was no longer a struggled, and she would say in Cassie's bed at night, and listen to her new mother read stories with her younger sister's. Sometimes she would reach up, and touch Cassie's chin as she formed the words, like she was still trying to puzzle out this odd little thing that humans did to the air from their lungs with their mouth and tongues.

When she carried three sleepy children to bed at the end of a long day, Cassie couldn't help but think, this is what she had been born for.

**Two Days Later**

Jacob can't get out of bed today; he just doesn't have the strength.

"You ok, Dad?" Sam asks softly. The way he is acting is reminding her of when he had cancer, but she's not going to think about that. She's not going to ask about that. If she never mentions it, then it's not going to be true.

"I'm sorry, Sammy," he says.

Her lip quivers, "I'll call someone, a doctor; they'll get it figured out."

"I've been to the doctor, Sam."

"You beat it before," Sam insists.

"Not this time."

She lies down on the bed next to her father, and puts her head on his shoulder.

"I love you, Daddy."

**One Month Later**

For the last couple of weeks, Jacob has been surrounded by family and friends; that's what you do when someone you love is in the hospital.

When he dies, he's all alone. It's the middle of the night, and he is dreaming of a family dinner and love.

**Two Months Later**

The whole time Vala had been pregnant, she had been terrified that Tomin would find out that the baby wasn't his. Then the priest went and told him, and she thought for sure that she was going to be burnt at the steak now. Not that they hadn't already tried to kill her in the name of the Ori, more than once.

So she tells him the truth; at least mostly. He says that he believes her. He doesn't think that he's cheated on her (which she hadn't), and that this baby must really be the will of the Ori.

It's a non-event really, just like pretty much everything is when you're married to Tomin. They never speak of it again.

Still, there are tiny changes that let her know that there is something different between them. He looks at her less when they are sitting across the table. He stops brining her little treats, but that could just be, because they are traveling through space, and little treats are a lot harder to get. He doesn't hold her when she goes to sleep anymore. She doesn't know if it's, because he is in awe of her, because he has stopped loving her, or simply because her belly is too big to allow it.

Her growing belly is her only comfort. Inside of her is her baby. Her love. When she holds it in her arms, nothing else will matter.

So when labor starts, she can't wait to meet her little child.

Then they take her daughter away from her, and then she grows up at an unbelievably quick speed, and Vala is still alone.

Her arms ache for the little baby who will never fill them.

**Two Months Later**

There were a few things on Earth that Vala had really enjoyed the last time that she was here – bubble baths, and ice cream, and movies. These were all things that she planned on enjoying as soon as she got back to Earth, well that and a good cry.

She is alone in her room just finishing with the first cry (she's not crazy enough to think it's going to be the last) of the night, and about to run a bath when she hears a knock at the door.

It's Daniel.

"I just want to see if you needed anything," he says softly.

"I'm fine," she says. The last thing she wants to see is someone who has four children, when she was not even given one. Why shouldn't joy and pain be distributed fairly through the world? Why should some get all of one, and none of the other?

"I'm sorry about what happened to your daughter," he says, looking anywhere but her face.

His eyes are old, and sad. He's seen grief, and he's not going to leave when he knows that she must be falling apart.

"It's not like she's dead," Vala says. That's something she's been repeating to herself over and over. She can't grieve for her daughter, because her daughter is fine. She's going to save her… somehow, some way.

"No, but I'm still sorry," he says.

She doesn't know what to say to that, and they stand there as the awkwardness grows around them.

"You should come to my house," he states.

It's not wise. Being around all the kids so healthy, and well, so… not bent on intergalactic domination might be too much for her. Yet… at his house, there would be children to hold, and she could use a hug of a little one right about now.

"There will be beer," Daniel adds.

Well, she can't turn that down. Nods her head, and the two of them walk off together.

-0-

She snuggles down in Will's bed, with one of the boys at each of her sides. They are in footy pajamas and snuggled under blankets that have silky edges. They rub the edges against their mouths, and tuck teddy bears under their arms. Earth is such a wonderful place to have invented all of these cuddly things.

"Story," they beg.

She starts to tell a story involving the biggest space ship that she ever stole, but Daniel cuts her off before she even gets started.

"I think it would be safer if you told one from a book," he says, handing her a volume of nursery rhymes.

It's funny; these things are from Earth of course, and the ones that she learned when she was little had nothing to do with these things, and yet there was something about them that was the same. Maybe childhood was the same everywhere.

By the time she has read twenty pages of the short poems, both of the boys seem to be asleep. She starts to get up, and when she moves Will mutters, "I love you," without fully waking up.

Vala rushes from the room, and is barely able to get out of earshot before she starts sobbing. Daniel doesn't ask her what's wrong, he just slides on the floor, and sits next to her. When the sobbing finally slows down he says, "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," she says, thinking that he's apologizing for the fact that she didn't get the baby she's longed for.

"I shouldn't have asked you to come. I thought it would make it better, but it just made it worse," he says, so guilty that she has to tell him the truth.

"It didn't make it any worse," she confesses.

They sit in silence for a moment before she says, "I really wanted her, you know. I know it was stupid to want her, but I did none the less."

"It's not stupid to want your child," he says softly.

"But the way she came about… I knew there was something weird going on. I should have known better than to get attached. It's not like things that good ever happen to me, not really," she says mournfully.

There is a long pause before Daniel says, "I know I shouldn't complain. Good things have happened to me. A lot of good things. Do you ever feel like it's just not fair? That some people get all the pain the world, and other people get all the joy?"

Vala nods her head.

They sit in silence next to each other for a long time. Vala longs to reach out and take his hand in hers. It would be so easy; the hand is right there, and this is the nicest, the softest that he has ever been to her. She fears to ruin the moment by her presumption, so she does nothing.

They sit there, miles or inches apart, depending on your perspective.

**The Next Day**

When Vala shows up at his house the next evening with a large bag, Daniel figures she's got something for the kids in it. He's a little surprised when she doesn't reveal its contents right away, but he quickly forgets about it.

It's nice to have another adult in the house. Nicer yet to hear laughter from his boys in the living room. There just hasn't been enough laughter in the house since Janet died.

After the kids are in bed, he sees Vala moving toward her beg, and figures that she's leaving. "Have a good night," he tells her.

"I hope we will," she says, pulling a bottle of wine out of the bag.

He freezes and stares at her, horrified.

She knows that she must have done something horribly wrong, but she has no idea what it is. If beer was OK last night, why is wine forbidden?

"No, it's just Janet…" his voice trails off as something that sounded a little bit like a sob came out of his mouth.

"It's always the weirdest things that remind you, isn't it?" she says, understanding grief completely.

The therapist that Daniel still sees frequently tells him that he needs to open up more if he wants to really make headway on his therapy. Yet, somehow, the words just come spilling out to this almost-stranger. "It was back when Janet and I first started dating. She had Cassie, so we couldn't go out a lot. I would show-up at her house to hang with Cassie. Then, after Cassie went to bed the two of us would share a bottle of wine," he says sitting down on the couch in the same spot that he used to sit. Vala takes Janet's place… in only a physical, not metaphorical sense, of course.

"The bottle of wine doesn't have to be anything but friendship, unless you want it to," Vala says, curling her feet under her on the couch.

Daniel pauses so long that she hides the bottle of wine behind her back, like that would make him forget that it was there, "There doesn't even have to be a bottle of wine."

Still no words come pouring out of his mouth.

"You know what? I'll just go," she says hurrying to her feet, and willing

"Stay," he says.

She pauses in the middle of the living room debating how seriously to take his words. She finally decides on pretty seriously, and sits back down the couch. She lets the wine bottle sit unopened on the floor of the living room.

He never answers her question about whether they are going to be friends to one another, or something more. But after listening to him talk for a couple minutes all doubts that she should just get up and leave flee from her mind.

"Janet and I went through a rough patch a few years back. I was a workaholic, and ignoring her. We started re-instating our wine nights. We'd just sit in the living room, and talk. It saved our marriage."

Vala remembers the fact that she's still married. She shouldn't have even been thinking that she could come over here with a glass of wine, and make Daniel fall in love with her. It would be wrong even if she could manage it somehow. She knows that she and Tomin would never have deep soulful chats over wine.

Well, maybe she couldn't have a marriage with Daniel; or sex, or even wine. But she'd be damned if she wasn't going to get the deep soulful chat.

"On the planet where I grew up, there was arranged marriage. After your mate was selected when you were 12 you began writing them letters; matches always lived in another town. You didn't get to meet until you were sixteen. My fiancé's first letter to me was only about six sentences long. I was the sort of thing a seven-year-old could have composed."

He laughs. Then he remembers what she told him about the village where she grew up.

"What happened? When you came back?"

"He called me Qetesh, and led the torture brigade," she mutters.

"That must have been horrible for you," he says, getting as close to holding her hand as she had gotten a few days ago to holding his.

"It wasn't his fault. He didn't understand what had happened to me, and I heard the villagers were quite cruel to him, because of his association with me."

"Still," Daniel says.

"Still," Vala replies.

There is silence for a few more seconds, but this silence is a great deal less awkward than the silence of only a few moments ago.

"Well, I think if we're going to keep having discussions this intense we're going to need some wine to do it by," Daniel says, getting up and grabbing the wine bottle from the floor in one fluid motion on his way to the kitchen.


	109. Part 11 Chapter 1

**Sort of spoilers for "Unending." Not that Unending happens in this chapter, but I did steal some dialogue from it… I bet you all can guess what dialogue.**

**One Month Later**

Rya'ac rests his head against the forehead of Aaliyah. All of the tension goes out of her. The almost-tantrum dies on her lips. His mind reaches out and touches her in tek-lo-reem. Her mind is still a little flighty. Anxious. His is as steady and heavy as his own father's was when he was little. It gives her rest.

She is good at meditation, much better than either of her sisters, even if you account for the fact that they are much younger than her.

A stuffed animal hits Rya'ac in the head, and he leaves the meditation to tickle the rambunctious Keisha, who was guilty of the crime.

Liyah sighs with frustration; she was really close this time. To reaching him, to telling him all the things that she couldn't find the words for, the pictures for. All the things that she thought inside of her head, but had no way to get out of her.

Cassie opens up the door, and the children run to her, saying her name, except that Jayla has taken to calling Cassie "Mommy" lately. Time stretches out so much when you're little that Jayla can't really remember the time before the accident or her actual mother anymore.

Aaliyah has never called anyone "mommy", and Keisha is a bit stingier with the title than her little sister is, since she can remember the first person that she ever bestowed it on.

Rya'c lingers as he and Cassie talk about their days, and Cassie gets a very detailed kindergarten report for the talkative Keisha.

When Cassie asks him to stay for dinner, he accepts, as he always does. Rya'c likes being needed. He got so used to it when his own house was full of small children, and his father and step-mother could barely manage it without his help. Now, though, things were calmer. Beck had turned quite studious when she entered middle school. She was a bit reluctant to clean underneath her bed, and sometimes had to be reminded to put the book away and play with her friends, but other than that, she was quite easy to parent. Tam was fifteen, and mature for her age. She did her chores and her homework. Once in a while, she needed a good chat with her mother about catty friend troubles at school, or a blushing one with her sister about crushes.

The twins, at four, were getting to be a bit less work as well. They were old enough now that they could entertain themselves, at least for short stretches.

Here, at Cassie's house, he was always needed by one of the small girls. He felt like they deserved everything that they got, because they had suffered so much lose already.

"Goodnight," Rya'c says, after he and Cassie have done the dishes together.

"You could stay longer if you wanted," Cassie offers.

"I've got homework," Rya'c says.

"I want Rya'c story, please," Aaliyah says in her sing song voice that is just a bit louder than it really needs to be.

"Ok, story," he says. He tells himself that he is staying because you need to make speech effective. He tells himself that he's only staying because wants to encourage Aaliyah to talk more, to risk putting words together in constructions that she's never heard before, even if it means making some mistakes, and awkward speech in the beginning.

Rya'c walks upstairs, with three girls bounding after him. No-one invites Cassie along, even though she knows they probably wouldn't object if she followed them. She understands her mother, in that instant, better than she ever had before.

She understands how it is possible to be jealous that your children like someone more than they like you.

She understands how frustrating it can be for a man to be willing to drop everything to do something for you kids when he just said that he would not do that same thing for you.

Only with her, the whole thing is a whole lot more irrational than it was with her mother. At least her mother was dating or married to the man when she felt that way. Cassie is paying him to bond with her children. Even though he's off the clock right now, it only makes sense that he would be more interested in the three little people with whom he spent the better part of the day, than in her.

"Someday you're going to find a guy for real," she whispers to herself, before going upstairs to join them all.

**One Week Later**

It's a rare night that Vala doesn't make a visit to the Jackson house when SG-1 is on-world. Sometimes she just comes for dinner, or to spend a little time with the kids who fill an ache in her heart. Sometimes she comes after they've all gone to bed to mock sci-fi or play a game of "my planet's better than your planet" with Daniel (she never tired of the game, since she picked a different planet as "hers" each time. The joys of being a pathological liar.) Sometimes it was wine and being each other's therapist. Most often, it was some combination of all of the above.

Always, there was the agony of Is it a date, is it not a date? Should I touch his hand, should I not? To flirt or not to flirt, that was the question.

Usually, they both picked not.

Then came the night when she decided they were going to watch "Wormhole Extreme" again, in preparation for the second season which was about to be aired, five years after season one. Vala had watched each episode so many times that she knew all the lines by heart, and she recited them along with the actors, just a fraction of a second ahead. Daniel didn't know why that fraction of a second drove him so batty. He only knew that it did.

So he reached over to grab the remote out of her hand. She pulled it away from him, and he reached over her to get it. His arm brushed against her breast. He was so distracted by this important fact that she used the element of surprise to push him to the floor.

They're fighting just like they did back on the ship, except this time there is no real danger or malice in it. Even when there was, the fighting turned Daniel on, now that that is all gone from it, there is nothing but sexual tension in the act.

Before he can even think, he flips her on her back, and rubs himself against her. The look that is on her face is one that can only be worn by someone who has waited a long time for a good thing to happen, and is getting their just desserts at last.

He rises to his feet, startled by the desire he sees in her eyes, and she thinks that she's done something wrong, and wishes that she could figure out what it was. She'd apologize for it, whatever it was, and no matter how badly she wanted to repeat it. Then he holds out his hand to her. She stands up off the floor, and takes it.

He turns from her, and they walk single-file down the hallway without saying a word. Her hand is on the small of his back, and yet somehow, this is one of the most sensual things she's ever experienced. Maybe what her step-mother was always telling her about dressing and flirting was trueless is more.

He pulls her inside the room, and closes the door, and presses her against it.

She wants to try to escape from his grasp, to make this a game like it was one the floor of the living room. She wants to wrestle with him. She just can't bear to make herself, because she wants it so much, she wants him so much.

"Oh, God, Daniel," she whispers as he kisses her neck.

"I'm not a god," he says as he guides her to the bed. She could escape now for sure, but she isn't going to. She would let him lead her anywhere.

"You're a god-slayer," she says.

"False gods," he corrects.

"Even better," she says, willingly falling on the bed and letting him cover her.

It was never this good. Even Qetesh didn't feel this much satisfaction when she had eight nis'maed men servicing on her, and Vala's disgust to turn her on.

Daniel was amazing.

He had been still for quite some time, no doubt enjoying his success as much as she had, and then suddenly she felt his muscles go tight next to her.

"What's wrong?" she asks, running her hands across the muscles on his bare chest.

"What did we just do?" he asks, sitting up in bed.

"You would think the father of two biological children would be able to recognize sex when he did it," she says with a giggle.

He starts to grab clothes of the floor. Whenever an article is hers, he throws it to her, and if it's his own, he pulls it on. He makes a mistake with the shirts. They are both black SGC-issued things, and the sizes aren't much different. You can tell, however, when he's put the shirt on, that hers is used to having a bit more in the chest area that he has to offer it.

"I get it, you don't want the kids to catch Daddy having sleepovers," she says, starting to dress herself, and trying her best not to be offended by his haste. "I will keep the innuendo to a minimum, and not blow our cover."

"Vala," he says, looking pained.

"Look, if I stop the innuendo altogether, they are going to get suspicious. They are used to me, after all, darling."

He stares at her, and she stops chatting. Once, when she as a child traveling with her father, she stepped through the Stargate from a world which spun incredibly fast to one which spun incredibly slow. Going through the Stargate alone was enough to make someone sick, but that change….well, it had felt exactly like this. She was going from very happy to very sad in a mere second.

"Vala, we can't just sleep together."

I will not cry, she tells herself. "Right," she mutters, turning her back to him with the pretended reason of getting dressed out of his view. Really, she knows that she is close to tears, and she's hoping that she is going to be able to keep exactly how close she is to tears away from him.

"I mean, come on. It's not like we could ever have a serious relationship," he continues.

The tears start to fall in earnest now.

"I mean, yes, you've proven yourself to be trustworthy on a professional level, and I am very proud of you for that. But on a personal level? Come on, Vala, give me a break. I mean, at best, you're an unstable emotional wreck. I'm not saying that I'm much better," Vala can hear the sound of Daniel pacing, and her mind frantically tries to think of a way to get out of his bedroom without him seeing her tears as she puts on the last of her clothes.

"I've lost two wives, Vala; I am pretty sure that I am never going to be able to be with someone in a serious fashion again, and if I was going to, not in a million million years would I possibly consider that person being you! I mean, we are so completely opposite, and wrong for one another, it's not even funny. And the worst part is you know that! And this whole flirty sexual thing that you do is just a way of having a laugh at my expense. So I'm sorry that I'm not more appreciative, and I'm sorry that you're bored. But don't you pretend that it's anything else."

She nods her head with her back still toward him, and then tries to make her way out of the room without turning. He reaches out his hand to stop her, "Don't act like you're hurt," he says with annoyance in his voice.

She nods her head, and slips from his grip making it to the door to his bedroom. He puts his hand flat on the door to stop her, and looks at her intently, "Hey."

"Please, just let me go," she pleads, a bit embarrassed.

"Look at me," he demands.

As soon as she does, he can see the truth of the whole thing. He wonders how he could have been so blind as to miss this all that time. He gives her a kiss that is so different from the ones that they just shared while they were making love. This one is gentle and romantic and sweet.

He pulls away and smiles at her, "You'd better not be messing with me."

She giggles in relief.

"So, I can keep coming over to send time with your kids, and have wine with you?" she asks timidly.

"Definitely."

"And is there going to be a repeat of what just happened?" she says, looking at the bed.

"Well, I'd like to think we're a bit too creative for a repeat, but there will definitely be something along those lines," Daniel says with a wide grin on his face.

"So we're together?" she asks.

He's touched by the worry that he sees in her eyes, "Yes, we're dating," he says, touching her cheek.

"Are we going to tell people?"

He gives her another one of his sweet and romantic kisses. "I'm not ashamed of you, Vala. We are going to tell the people we work for, my family, everyone."

She grins.

"We are however not going to make sexual comments around my kids, no matter how subtle you think you are being."

"Deal," she says, extending her hand in excitement.

He takes it, and shakes with a wide smile upon his face.


	110. Part 11 Chapter 2

**The Next Day**

Vala smiles at the sleeping form of Daniel Jackson. It was different to watch him sleep than what she'd imagined it would be. It wasn't so much hot as… cute. When he was asleep, he looked incredibly young, and she was able to see that he resembled his sons.

"Darling," she whispers.

He opens his eyes, and he looks so confused for a minute that she's tempted to hand him his glasses to help him figure out exactly who he's in bed with. He figures it out all on his own then, and smiles up at her, "Morning." Then he rolls over, and glances at the clock. He groans when he sees the time, and moves to turn off some alarm that was no doubt about to go off.

"I just wanted to say goodbye before I left," she tells him.

The look of early morning confusion returns. Apparently he doesn't do well without the coffee "We have the day off, why are you going?"

"I thought I should probably leave before the children got up," she explains.

He grins at her, "I told you that I wasn't ashamed of you."

"I figured my being around in the morning would fall under the category of the banned sexual innuendos."

He shakes his head, "I'm not really a big fan of lying to kids or hiding things from kids. Janet had me do that with Cassie. We made sure we never had sex when she was in the same house as us until after we were married. She still ended up having sex when she was seventeen, so it didn't work."

"Seventeen?" Vala says scrunching up her face, "If only you could know all the things I had done by the time that I was seventeen."

Daniel closes his eyes, and actually looks a little nauseous. "Nope, don't want to hear about it. Olivia only thirteen, and she already has a boyfriend. Granted, they've never seen each other outside of school, except once when he came to meet me. Apparently when you are an eighth grader you don't actually spend time with your boyfriend or girlfriend. Anyway, I don't even want to think about Olivia having sex, at least not until she's twenty-five."

"What if she gets married before that?" Vala asks.

"She won't," Daniel says firmly.

"So, you're really ok with me staying?" she asks tentatively.

He leans over, and gives her a quick peck on the lips. It's very intimate, this kiss, because of how unsexy it is. His mouth has the distinct flavor of morning breath, at least in part because their amorous activities the night before prevented him from brushing his teeth. It's the sort of kiss that people give each other when they've been together for a long time. It's not usually the sort of thing people would share when they've only had one night together. Vala likes that they're already an old couple.

"I would love for you to stay all day. If you didn't have other plans for your day off. It's not a day off for the kids, so I've got to get everyone off to school. Then Cassie is bringing over her littlest munchkin. I'll have to pick Drew up in the middle of the day. I mean, it's a pretty bland day, but if you're willing to spend it with me?" he suddenly looks sheepish and insecure.

"I'd love it," she says grinning at him, and heading for the bathroom.

He glances at the clock, "Sorry, I've got to have first shower. If I don't shower now I won't get the chance until tomorrow. You can shower later when I'm taking the kids to school or whenever."

"We could shower together," she says, raising her eyebrows alluringly at him.

"I wish," he says with true longing in his voice, "But I just don't have the time."

As soon as he disappears into the bathroom, she gets dressed. Then she makes the bed. This only eats up a few minutes of time. It would have been even less if not for the rather acrobatic love making/wrestling match they'd engaged in in the middle of the night.

She stands in the bedroom, and tries to think of what a mother would do, a proper mother. Then she knows, she's got to make breakfast. Not that she's that familiar with Earth cooking. She lives on base, and eats at the mess hall. She'd helped with supper enough that she can manage the basics. She goes into the kitchen, and starts the coffee, she knows that Daniel cannot go long without that. Then she puts some toast in the toaster, and scrambles some eggs.

"Well, that's good enough, isn't it?" she asks the oven, as if was going to offer her approval for her domestic turn.

"I think it's wonderful. We normally just have cereal for breakfast," a voice says.

Vala turns to see Olivia standing there. She knows that Daniel approved of her staying, of his kids knowing that she stayed. Still, this is awkward, this is strange. She remembers when she was a little kid, and her step-mother used to have people spend the night. Of course, her step mother had been married.

Then again, Vala remembers with a pain, so was she.

"Morning," she offers.

"You spent the night," Olivia says. It's not a question, but Vala decides to nod anyway.

"Finally!" Olivia says in a relaxed voice.

"Your father and I have started dating," Vala offers.

Olivia takes the toast as it pops out of the toaster, and spreads peanut butter on it, "Thank goodness. I've been waiting for this to happen for a while."

Vala looks at her in surprise.

"If you're going to make us breakfast, as far as I'm concerned you can stay over every night."

Will enters the room rubbing his eyes. "Morning," Vala says, picking him up.

He doesn't appear to be surprised to see her there, so she puts a bib on him, and scoops eggs onto both of the children's plates. She's about to go look for Drew when Daniel comes out, holding the little boy.

"You make breakfast?" he says, sounding surprised.

Vala nods her head, her stomach twisting with the newness of the relationship. She is both excited, and a little scared she stepped over her bounds.

He leans forward, and pecks her lips. The intimacy again.

She was married to Tomin, and she never felt that close to him.

"Thanks for cooking," he says, strapping his son into a high chair.

"So, Dad, is Vala living here?" Olivia says with enthusiasm.

Daniel just about chokes on the coffee that Vala just handed him. "No, Vala isn't living here."

"She could," Olivia says, grinning at the two adults.

"Olivia," Daniel says putting his hands on her shoulders, "You're going to have to let the adults decide on the pace here."

Olivia nods.

"'Uice!" Drew demands.

Vala grabs the orange juice out of fridge, and pours it into a glass container.

"Plastic for toddlers," Daniel says pouring it into plastic container from another cupboard, "And he'll only drink half of this," Daniel says, drinking a sip out of what he left out of the glass container.

"Sorry," she says blushing.

"It's ok," he assures her. He delights in the newness, lets-figure-it-out together bashfulness that their relationship has.

Cassie walks into the room wearing a pants suit and high heals. Daniel remembers when she was eleven, and new to Earth, and asked her mother why on Earth she tortured herself with those horrid shoes.

His daughter wearing the uncomfortable shoes makes even less sense to him. Janet's reason for wearing high heals was for the most part her height, Cassie doesn't have any problems in that department.

Cassie freezes, and stares at the woman in the kitchen.

"Vala made breakfast," Olivia explains nonchalantly.

Cassie's eyebrows raise, "Vala drove over here at seven in the morning just to make breakfast?"

"Nope," Olivia says, summing up in that single word, and the smile that followed what could be written about in paragraphs and pages.

"Dad, can I speak to you for a minute?" Cassie asks, hanging a diaper bag off the edge of the chair.

"You kept saying we hada hurry so Liyah and I wouldn't get late for school," Keisha reminds her mother.

Cassie sighs, "She's right, I'll talk to you about this later," Cassie says, giving a glare to Vala as she spins out of the room with her daughter's in tow.

Daniel walks over, and wraps an arm around the small of Vala's back, and plants a quick kiss on her cheek before he goes back to preparing breakfast.

-0-

It wasn't exactly the romantic day after that Vala was used to having when she slept with a man for the first time. It was full of teddy bears, and laundry, and a very obvious game of hid-and-seek.

It was the best day that Vala had had in a very long time.

Still, she wasn't really prepared for the look on her face when Cassie returned from work to pick up her kids. Apparently, Cassie had used the day to work herself into an even heightened state of anger than she had had that morning.

"I need to speak to you alone," she hisses to her father.

"Olivia, can you watch the kiddos, we'll be up in our bedroom," Vala says.

"She's not coming," Cassie says, as if even saying Vala's name would cause damage to her tongue.

"Go ahead," Vala gives them permission to go without her even though her stomach is doing somersaults.

"You're sleeping with her?" Cassie asks horrified as soon as they have shut the door behind them.

"It's a recent development."

"I can't believe this, dad! I mean, I haven't made the best choices when it comes to men, but at least I didn't pick one that was dressed in some sort of leather sex costume."

"She hasn't worn that in a long time," Daniel defends.

"Seriously, dad! Do you really want her around your kids? Your grandkids? She's a criminal, for crying out loud! How irresponsible can you be?"

"You don't know her like I do, Cass; she's a really good person. She had some really bad circumstances, and she really didn't have a choice in the worst of her criminal actions."

"I know that whole bit about a society making a criminal, but there has to be some allowance for personal responsibility. I mean honestly, when you met her, she was beating you up! That should be some kind of sign that you shouldn't be with her!"

"I was beating her up, too," he says forcing the thought of last night's wrestling match from his mind. He knows that if he thinks of that, for even a second, he's going to smirk.

"Only because she was stealing your ship. Dad, I get it if you want to have a fling. Mom's been dead for a while, and no-one expects you to go on forever without someone. Just not with her! Not with that floosy! Not with someone you work for, and not with someone you take home to meet the kids."

"It's not a fling," Daniel says, his voice sounding surprisingly certainly in his ears. He isn't that sure, is he?

"Are you honestly deluded enough to think that you could ever have something serious with her?"

He thinks about Vala – Vala being burnt to death in his arms, Vala's only child trying to take over the whole universe, Vala crying in his room last night when he said many of the same things that Cassie is saying right now.

"I know that we can have a serious relationship," he tells his daughter.

Cassie plops down on the bed. This was not anything like what she'd imagined this talk going like while she'd fumed about it at work all day. "Serious like you think you're going to marry her?" she says, feeling deflated.

"I don't know. We're still early. Probably something like that someday, though," he says, without having to pause to consider it, like this idea was not at all new to them.

Cassie tries to picture herself with a step-mother. She tries to picture Vala Mal Doran as a respectable married women. She can't actually manage either.

"Well, I'm going to go on record saying this is a bad idea. This is just as bad as when I dated James," she says spinning out of the room.

Daniel stays for a couple of seconds after she leaves. He can't spare anymore, because he doesn't want Vala to worry that something Cassie said has stuck with him. None the less it has.

What if he is making a mistake? What if his heart is going to get broken? It's already been shattered so many times by death that he is pretty sure it cannot take one more crack, one more break, at least without shattering his entire soul.


	111. Part 11 Chapter 3

**The Next Day**

Vala doesn't notice that she is humming while SG-1 gears up for a mission, but the rest of the team does. Daniel can't help but smirk to himself that he has that power over her, even though it's been the better part of a day since they were last together, at least in a carnal way.

"What's got you in such a good mood, Princess?" Cam asks.

Vala glances at Daniel for a second, wondering if he is still as good as his word about being willing to tell everyone that the two of them are together. He's looking away from her, and it's enough for her to conclude that he's changed his mind about the whole business. She doesn't know that he's trying his best to keep himself away from locker room bragging about sexual prowess. Vala may be quite the flirt, but he was pretty sure she wasn't up to the level of men in a locker room talk.

Vala is, in fact up to that level. She decides that if Daniel isn't going to tell everyone about them, she is going to use the secret to torture him. "I got lucky last night." She announces.

Daniel almost chokes on the way she presents the news. Teal'c and Cam look at him with sympathy in their eyes, assuming that jealousy is the cause of the reaction.

"I believe you have offered more information than was requested of you," Teal'c tells her.

"It's called TMI," Cam mutters.

"That's not true. I offered just as much information as was required. Cam asked why I was so cheerful, and I told him it was because I had really great sex."

Daniel's cheeks turn red from embarrassment that his teammates mistake for anger.

"Vala," Sam quietly scolds. She's been playing the role of peacekeeper on this team ever since she was assigned when her husband was promoted to General some time back.

"What, Samantha, haven't you ever gotten the kind of sex you feel like you had to brag about?" Vala asks her friend, without the conspiratorial whisper the other women was employing.

"I'm pretty sure Jack would kill me if I ever got the urge to brag," Sam says.

"I can certainly understand that sentiment," Daniel mutters.

The whole room… Vala included, stare at him open-mouthed as he outed himself.

"You?" Cam asks, unable to say the words that would have to follow to make it a more complete question of the mild mannered young man.

Daniel blushes, and comes forward to take Vala's hand, "We're together… I'd planned a much less embarrassing announcement, but what can you expect when Vala is involved?"

"Well, dear, I thought you were going back on your promise to tell the world about us," Vala says.

Daniel looks into Vala with a facial expression which clearly shows that they have lost all track of the world except for the two of them. This declares more completely that the two of them are committed to one another than any act of PDA ever could, "How many times do I have to tell you that I'm not ashamed of you before you start believing it?"

"This will definitely help," Vala says.

"You guys are _really_ together." Cam says, realizing to his shock that this is not a booty call that is going to screw with the dynamics of his team. Whatever this is, it's going to be long term. Although, he's still not sure that it won't screw with the dynamics of his team.

"Yeah, we really are," Vala ways with a voice that warms up Daniel's chest. He's relieved that he isn't the only one who thought so.

"Well, I hope you guys are going to be able to keep your hands off one another, because the people of P3X-909 are asexual. It's going to be awfully hard to explain that dopey look on your face to them."

"Don't worry, we'll be professional," Daniel says.

"Yes! Totally professional!" Vala agrees. Daniel turns to leave the locker room, and she pinches his butt as she goes.

He turns around to give her a glare.

"Off world. I mean, I'll be totally professional off world," she amends.

"How about any time we're on base or off world?" Daniel asks.

"I _live_ on base," she whines.

Not for long, Daniel thinks in his head.

"Yeah, well, all of us work on base, so I agree with your boyfriend that you should keep your shenanigans off base," Cam says quickly.

"Shenanigans?" Sam asks with a raised eyebrow.

"I prefer this word to Vala Mal Doran's description of their actions," Teal'c says.

"Amen to that," Daniel says.

"It was all complimentary," Vala mutters in her own defense.

**One Week Later**

Rya'c had gotten another letter from Amy. For a girl who had written several books of manga by the time that she'd left high school, her letters were pretty short, and far between. What she had to say was mostly about how amazing the tribe she was working with was, and how they were really starting to accept her as a member.

"I've always thought that I would stay just long enough to understand the people that I was working with, and then I would move on to the next group. What I am just beginning to realize is that a lifetime isn't long enough to even begin to understand a group of people, not really."

She wasn't coming back. Rya'c knows that in his heart of heart, even though she hasn't said it yet. He wonders how he ever could have been so foolish as to believe that she was going to come back.

**One Day Later**

Rya'c puts his head against her forehead, a gentle Tek-no-rem to calm her. Her sisters were already in bed but Aaliyah never went to bed without a bit of protest.

It's like screaming, so loud that it is almost painful, but it isn't words or even sounds that are being screamed, it's _pictures,_ it's _feelings._

Jayla in footy pajamas snuggled against her, sucking her thumb to the rhythm of a nursery rhyme read by his own voice. The nursery rhyme is wordless, it is only the rhythm, the predictability that breaks through. Through the picture runs something stronger even than love. It might be called loyalty, but what other people mean when they say that word was a weak comparison indeed.

There was fear, and terror, and blood. Only, Aaliyah didn't know it was blood. It's hard to understand things like that when you're little, and haven't mastered English yet. She only knew that her mother was leaking like a water balloon, and soon there would be nothing left.

Then Cassie's arms around her, holding her, and rocking her back and forth. Back and forth. Just the motion, and the embrace. That was all there was left in the world when the water balloon leaked out… but it was enough.

A chipmunk, her sister, talking always a thousand miles a minute. The noise never stopped. But to Aaliyah, that was a good thing. She liked things that were certain, that could be counted on. Her sister could be counted on to talk, always talk.

He pulls away, startled by the images. It's more than he thought the little girl was capable of thinking about, more than he thought that she knew about the world. He would probably think that the images had really come from his own mind, only he could never think of something so unique, so different.

She looks startled by the break in contact, and is pulled too quickly from Tek-no-rem. She blinks at him, and he knows what those blinks mean.

"You heard me."

He leans forward, and puts a kiss on her forehead. She doesn't like it. She doesn't understand kisses, they are too social, too token, too symbolic for her. She understands hugs, and snuggles, for they are real human contact that fills a need she desperately has.

She doesn't want any affection now, she wants his forehead back where his lips have been.

She's been silent for seven years, and she has a lot of catching up to do.

"I love you," he tells her.

The words don't make sense. They are not an action. They are not a song. They have no rhythm. She can't count on them.

He leaves the room with her mind still reaching, striving to touch his.

"I love you," her mind repeats.

That must be a way to tell someone you are leaving.

Like a flash her echoic memory repeats it back to her… Her mother mouthed those words as the water balloon emptied.

-0-

"How was your day?" Cassie asks as she returns from work.

The girls are all fast asleep now, and rooms away from the miracle, it feels far less real than it did when Rya'c was right up against it. He can't actually find the words to describe what happened to him tonight with his forehead against the little girl's, at least not without sounding crazy.

"Fine," he tells her, and leaves.

She watches him go, and wishes… that she was someone else, or that he was. Whatever it would take for him to look at her with the same intensity he looks at the little girls. Well, not exactly the same intensity; a different flavor, but equal force.

-0-

Cassie wakes up to hands on her face. That is a sure sign that Aaliyah is trying to get her attention. She opens her eyes, and takes the sobbing girl into her arms.

"Ry'ac!" she sobs. "I want Ry'ac, please." She can see in her head the blood coming out of him. He's deflating like a water balloon. She has to do something fast, or else he will be gone forever just like her mother was.

"Honey, Rya'c went home for the night. He doesn't live here," Cassie explains.

The words have no rhythm, they are not actions, so she doesn't understand them.

"I want Rya'c," Aaliyah sobs again, desperate to save his life.

Cassie hold the small girl tighter, and reaches for the phone.

-0-

As soon as Ry'ac enters the house, Aaliyah launches herself into his arms.

"I don't know what's wrong," Cassie tells him, having long since given into sobs herself.

He doesn't bother to answer her, but simply but his head against the small girl's forehead.

Aaliyah feels his presence. How can he be here? Is the water balloon leaking more slowly than her mother's?

His voice is calm, and deep. It is completely lacking in pain. He is fine. How is he fine?

'I love you's come through his mind like waves on a beach. Steady, deep, and comforting.

'I love you' isn't what you say before you leave. Aaliyah doesn't know what it means, but she knows that it is a good thing, a very good thing.

He pulls away, minutes later, and looks at a frantic Cassie.

"She thought that I was dead," Ry'ac explains.

"How exactly do you know that?" Cassie asks, trying not to sound to jealous at his special knowledge.

"Well, something happened today, and I didn't tell you about it, because I didn't really know how to explain it. When we were in tek-lo-reem, she spoke to me."

"She probably doesn't realize you're not supposed to talk when you are meditating," Cassie says, defending her daughter.

"No, you don't get it. She didn't use words. When you're deep in tek-lo-reem, you see the other person's thoughts. I mean, usually that is words, or at least words and other things. Aaliyah doesn't think in words though, it was picture, and feelings, and…"

"What did she say?" Cassie asks.

Rya'c struggles to find words to put all the things that Aaliyah thought in to words. "She said that she really likes her family," he summarizes.

"How did that lead to her thinking that you were dead?" Cassie asks.

"Well, when I felt all the things that she as feeling, I realized how much that she cared for all of us, me included. So I told her that I loved her."

"What's the big deal? I tell her that all the time."

"I know, but she doesn't understand how speech words. She understands repetition, and rhythm and pitch, but she doesn't understand that the words actually mean something. She didn't understand what you meant. She only realized what I was saying, because it was so close to a memory of someone else saying it. It was the last thing her mother ever said to her."

Cassie tightens her grip on the girl in her arms, which prevents Aaliyah from falling asleep when she was just about to. "She remembers that?" Cassie asks.

"She worries about it a lot," Rya'c admits.

"Does she understand death?" Cassie asks, trying to find a way to grasp a concept as big, as horrible, as strange as that without the use of any words.

"In her own way, yes, she knows that her mother is not coming back. She knows that it's because she got hurt."

"I want to talk to her like that. Can you teach me?" Cassie asks.

Rya'c smiles, and gives the tiny nod that he and his father both use to agree. Cassie shifts Aaliyah off to the side of the couch, and the two of them face each other with their knees folded under themselves.

Rya'c starts to move in to touch foreheads, and Cassie is surprised by how closely this move resembles the move that boys made when they were about to kiss her. She stares at him in surprise.

"You have to close your eyes," he tells her.

"Of course," she mutters, thinking this is making the kissing metaphor complete. He misses the sarcasm, and touches her forehead.

He goes rapidly into meditation, and his mind reaches for hers. Hers is flighty, and fidgety, and untrained, and it's twenty minutes before he can grasp it for a single second of joint revelation.

But, oh, what revelation it is!

The things she feels for him. There is admiration for his parenting skills. There is love for his stoicism. There is fascination with his origins. Most of all though, there is longing, to trust, and yet… not quite the ability to do so.

It's only a second, and then her soul pulls away from his, "I never meant to tell you," she says, picking up the girl and carrying her out of the room.

Rya'c stares after her, glad that he and Amy made no promises not to see other people, because that felt a bit too much like cheating.


	112. Part 11 Chapter 4

**The Next Day**

Daniel is dropping off his sons at his daughter's house. He never imagined that he would be sharing child care responsibilities with his daughter. At this stage in his life, it just makes sense. It's hard to find someone to watch small children overnight. So when he has an overnight mission, he drops them off with their sister. On his days off, he takes his grandkids. When they are both busy, the children are looked after by separate nannies.

He can see that something is wrong the second that he walks through the door. "What is it?" he asks.

She shakes her head, hoping that he is going to let it pass.

He doesn't. He touches her shoulder gently, "Are you ok?"

"It's nothing," she repeats.

He stares at her a moment longer.

"It's Ry'ac," she confesses.

Terror and confusion fills his heart.

"Not like that!" she says in horror, "I'm in love with him."

Daniel raises his eyebrows, "You're in love with your nanny?"

"I know!" she bemoans.

"Ok, well, Ry'ac is a good man. A big step up from James. I don't really see what the problem is."

"He doesn't feel the same."

"You told him how you feel?"

"No, but he sort of found out by accident," Cassie says.

"Well, honey, I'm sorry, what did he say?" Daniel asks, worried.

"I didn't really give him time to say anything. I was way too embarrassed for that!"

"Then how do you know that he doesn't feel the same way?" Daniel asks.

"I could just sense it," at the raise of her father's eyebrows she adds, "We were meditating. You can find out a lot of stuff about someone just by meditating with them."

"Right, Teal'c and I have had some sessions together," Daniel says, flinching ever so slightly at the memory of a particularly nasty Jaffa battle which had accidently leaked into his mind.

"So, he doesn't love me, and I still love him," Cassie says.

"Oh, I am so sorry," Daniel says, pulling her into a nice long hug.

-0-

"You're here early," Cassie says. She's now faced with the unpleasant dilemma of losing an hour with her children, or spending an hour with someone she is so embarrassed to be around.

"The next hour I will be here for the kids, but this hour I am here for you," Ry'ac says.

"I'm sorry about what you saw, what you felt last night," she says, looking down so Ry'ac can't see her face.

"I'm not," Ry'ac says.

She looks at him, "Don't you lie to me. I felt your heart as clearly as you felt mine. I know that you don't love me."

"Didn't," he corrects.

"Well then, is your heart so fickle as to change its mind in a single night? I don't know if would be worth being loved by a heart like that."

"I'd never felt your soul before," he explains. "My dear Cassandra, you have a beautiful soul."

She blushes, but her eyes are still hard. She doesn't believe him, not yet. So he leans forward, and lets their foreheads touch, and then there is not a region of her mind left untouched enough by his mind that it can doubt a word he says.

"You're crying," he says as he pulls away. He takes the pad of his thumb to wipe the tears away from her eyes.

"I can't help it… It's like when you hear a really good song. Beautiful, but also… true," she says.

"Plato said that truth and beauty were the only things worth searching for in life," Ry'ac says, smiling at her.

"You've read Plato?" she asks in surprise.

He nods his head.

"Is that required to be a teacher?" she asks.

"It's required to live. But do you only read what is required of you? This planet has a great wealth of philosophers. I like that they write them down. In my culture, we spread the word of wise men from mouth to mouth. It is not a perfect system, and I do not think it is capable of reaching back as far as Plato, even though my people live far longer than the people of this world."

Cassie finds herself more than a little amazed. She can't remember if she's ever heard that many words from the quiet man before in her life. "I'm afraid that I haven't read much philosophy," she says.

He nods his head. He knows all of this and more from the examination of her head that he's just had, "It's a pity, because your mind is like the mind of a philosopher already," he tells her.

She smiles, "So we're dating?"

"Courting," he corrects.

"Is there a difference?" she asks.

He nods his head, but doesn't bother to explain. She doesn't ask him too. She figures she'll find out before too long, and it will be an adventure as she finds it out.

"What about Amy?" Cassie asks nervously.

"Amy and I made no promises to each other before she left. Nonetheless, I sent a letter this morning that more officially absolves our relationship."

"Are you sorry?" she asks, searching his eyes for the truth that a forehead touch would have offered her.

"No; Amy and I could never have made one another happy. I would always be a millstone around her neck, preventing her from flying off on a great adventure."

"Are we going to tell the children?" Cassie asks.

"No, not until…" he doesn't finish the sentence, but there is a little bit left of the connection form their meditation, and Cassie feels the rest of it anyway. She quickly learns the difference between dating and courting. Ry'ac is already thinking of marriage.

Dating is for teenagers, adolescents, children playing at the thing of love. They have both dated before. No; this thing, this is courting, and it is for women and men. It's a way for the two of them to start their life together.

**The Next Day**

** "**That was definitely the most exhausting mission in the history of the SGC," Vala complains as she and Daniel step through the gate. She's hanging off him with one arm around his neck, and the other around his waist.

"We're on base," he whispers.

"I know! I thought we'd never get here. I don't think I slept the whole forty hours we were gone!" she exclaims.

"What I mean is you have to get your hands off me now!" he exclaims.

"I'm sorry, but if I let you go I'm not going to be able to stand up," she protests while her head falls against his shoulder.

Frankly, Daniel is glad for an excuse to let her continue to hang off of him. He doesn't actually like the 'no PDAs on base' rule any more than she does. He just has to pretend to be a big fan, because if he doesn't enforce it, neither one of them is likely to have their job for very long. He winds his arm around her, and whispers in her ear, "Well, as long as we have a good sound medical reason for it, I supposed I can help you to the car."

"Daniel, I don't think you are getting how tired I am. There is no way I have the energy for even the laziest sexual position I know, and let me assure you I know more than a few truly lazy ones. I am just going to go straight to sleep."

Daniel blushes at the words coming out of her in a public place, even though she had the curtesy to whisper them. "I don't have the energy for sex either, but I thought you could still come over to my place."

Vala pauses, and looks up at him, "Why?" she asks.

"Well, so you can see the kids and we can cuddle, and wake up next to one another, and have breakfast together," he is about to continue on when suddenly a light bulb goes off in his head, "Vala, you've never actually slept with someone without having sex before, have you?"

She shakes her head, and he kisses the top of it, right where her pigtales are parted from. "You and me, we're more than just great sex," he tells her.

She snuggles her head against his forehead a little bit more as he reaches a hand away from her to press the button of the elevator.

Daniel realizes that he hasn't often said things like that to her. Things that would let her know how much she meant to him. He's going to have to change that. He's not very good with the words, even though he is a linguist, so he's going to have to _show _her how much he means to her. He has just the idea of how he's going to do it.

-0-

"Would you like to stay for dinner?" Cassie asks nervously. She hopes the Ry'ac understands that this invitation has more to do with their dating relationship than their working one. She hopes he knows that he's off the clock. Otherwise she could end up paying someone to date her. Of course, she isn't even sure if you can call it a date when there are little kids around.

"Yes," he says with a smile that clearly lets her know that he understands her intention.

He takes a seat at the head of the table, and she takes a seat at the other end. The three children sit between them, and more time is spent in teaching table manners and conversational skills than in talking like adults. She begins to regret her decision. Next time, she tells herself, they are going to have to go out, and have a proper date.

Then she looks over at Rya'c, and sees how happy he is. She remembers that they aren't dating. They're courting, and that is way better.

Later, when the kids have gone to bed, the two of them sit down for a long tek-lo-rem, undisturbed. As their souls mingle, any thought that this is too early, that this might not work out, fall from Cassie's mind.

Yes, a few more nights like this, and she'll be ready for an engagement, provided of course it's a decently long engagement.

**The Next Day**

When Vala wakes up, she is surprised to see Daniel sitting at the end of the bed, looking at an open drawer. She goes to her knees, and crawls up beside him, putting an arm around his shoulders.

"I gave you a drawer," he announces without taking his eyes off of it in order to look at her.

"Oh, this is one of those Earth things, isn't it? It's like a big important Earth relationship thing!" she squeals, bouncing up and down on the bed next to him.

He turns to her, and smiles for a second, before his face grows more serious again, "I tried to give you part of the closet as well, but I ran into some of Janet's things there, and I just couldn't."

"That's ok, we are going to take this thing as slow as either one of us need to," she tells him giving his shoulders a little squeeze.

"I'm sorry that I have so many ghosts in my closet," he tells her.

She slides from her knees to her bottom so she can sit next to him, "I like you all the better for them. There is something good about loving a man who has already loved someone, loved someone really well, with that forever kind of love. It makes me feel safer, you know."

He puts his arm around her, and kisses her on the forehead again. Then he gets up to take care of all of her fatherly duties, and leaves her alone to stare at the drawer for a long minute.

"You know, all the TV shows show people all happy over their drawers. They just don't go on to say what the people DO with their drawers afterword."


	113. Part 11 Chapter 5

"What's the emergency?" Sam asks when she arrives at Vala's quarters.

"Daniel gave me a drawer," Vala says breathlessly as she pulls the other women into her quarters, and shuts the door behind her.

"Ok, I'm really hoping there is some sort of a language barrier here, because I don't think you quite understand what the word 'emergency' means," Sam says with a roll of her eyes.

"I am in desperate need of girl talk. I don't know what this means in your Earth customs."

"I means that he likes you," Sam says, trying not to roll her eyes again.

"Right, but what am I supposed to fill the drawer with? Sex toys?"

"You have enough sex toys to fill a drawer?" Sam asks in shock. "No, Never mind, please don't answer that," she says when she sees that Vala is beginning to open her mouth. "You're supposed to fill the drawer with clothes and other stuff; you know, whatever would make you more comfortable. When a man gives you a drawer, he wants you to spend the night more often."

"More often? I'm already there three or four night a week," Vala says.

"Really?" Sam says with her eyebrows up.

"Is that unusual?" Vala says nervously.

"Not really, it's just a bit early. You guys haven't been together long."

"So, what exactly should I pack?" she says, looking at her closet.

"Well, what have you wished you had the morning after you wake up there?" Sam asks.

"Shampoo that wasn't man-flavored," Vala says quickly.

"Man-flavored?" Sam says with a cough.

"You know, it smells like only a man would wear it," Vala explains.

"Ah, well, pack your shampoo," Sam says, grabbing it out of the bathroom caddy, "Passionfruit; well, that isn't man-flavored at all."

"That's the only one I have, though. If I take it to Daniel's, I'll have no shampoo here."

"Let me get this straight, you spend more time there than here, right?" Vala nods, "So why don't you bring it back here when you're not there? Or buy another? What else?"

"Make-up," Vala says with decision, opening a drawer full of the stuff.

"Looks like you have enough of that to divide," Sam says with a laugh.

"I don't have many clothes, besides my BDUs, and some leather things Daniel told me I wasn't allowed to wear in front of his children," Vala says.

"I think you need a shopping trip then," Sam says.

"Really?" Vala asks, bouncing.

"Really, I could use one too. It's been a long time since I've gone shopping without kids in tow as well."

-0-

"Hey, Vala," Daniel says as he opens up the door for her, "I thought you weren't coming here tonight."

"I just did a bit of shopping with Samantha," she says, pulling bags into the living room, and going out to the step to pull in another arm full of bags.

"A little?" Daniel says incredulously.

"Maybe more than a little. See, I started packing for the drawer, and then I discovered that I really had very little clothes besides BDUs. You know, I've been borrowing your things or wearing BDUs. I just wanted… to look nice," she says.

He picks up half of the packages that she put down, and starts to carry them to his bedroom. "You always look nice."

"Well, thank you, but I think I would look nicer in clothes that I actually picked out."

"Is it something that I would allow you to wear in front of my children?"

"Sam approved it all for children. Well, apart from the stuff in this bag, and that isn't really intended for anyone's eyes but yours," she says, shaking a Victoria Secret bag.

Daniel giggles, and Vala drops down the bags on the floor of the room, going to open the drawer.

"There is something in here already," Vala says. She already didn't think that it would all fit in the drawer. Now he's filled it up again. He's taking back her place in his life.

"I got those for you," he says.

She pulls them out, "What are they?"

"Pajamas, they're to wear to bed," he explains.

"But I don't wear anything to bed," she says.

"Right, and that is kind of what I want to correct," he says.

"Excuse me," she says with her hands on her hips. She had never had someone try to put clothes ON her before.

"You get cold," he says with an eye roll at how insulted she became.

"Then you turn up the heat for me."

"And then I roast."

She giggles, relieved that he hasn't tired of her naked body quite yet, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"There was a beautiful naked girl in my bed, who was I to complain?" he shrugs.

She kisses him for the compliment, and then asks, "What made you tell me now?"

"Well, I didn't want to be roasting in my own bed forever."

She grins at the word 'forever'.

She bought too many things. Even when he re-arranges things a bit to give her a drawer in the bathroom as well, there are quite a few things left in the bags when she's done.

"If you don't mind, I'll just leave them in the bags, that won't hurt anything will it?" she asks.

He smiles, and tells her it won't. In his heart though, he knows it's about time he gave this women some closet space. He's held on to Janet's things long enough.

**The Next Day**

Maybe he would have been better off doing this in a phone call. After all, Cassie might not want any of these things, and then he would have wasted all the time that it took to pack them up and bring them across town. He knows that wouldn't have worked out well, though, the idea that he was presevering them for his daughter, instead of discarding them for his girlfriend, was the only way that he had managed to pack them up in the first place. If she didn't want them, well, at least they were out of the closet now.

"Hey dad, what's all that?" Cassie asks looking down at the boxes.

"It's some of your mother's things. I thought you might want to have them," he says.

She looks at him with a choke in her throat. She opens one of the boxes, expecting to see some sort of keepsake, perhaps a box of pictures. When she sees clothes, her heart almost breaks.

"This isn't about Mom! This is about you clearing a place for your whore!"

"She isn't a whore!" Daniel says angrily, pushing the boxes into his daughter's apartment, and shutting the door behind him to prevent the neighbors form hearing their argument.

"So you don't deny that you're casting off mom's stuff for that harlot's? What if I don't take them? Is your next stop is goodwill? Out with the old and in with the slut?"

"You really need to stop calling Vala those nasty names, and I was never going to get rid of your mother's stuff. Although, it's not like it isn't long past time. If you didn't want it, I was going to put in the basement next to all the other stuff of hers that we shouldn't have kept. Like a used napkin that she used the day before she died that I dug out of the trash in her office. Vala is not a replacement for your mother."

"Damn right she's not," Cassie says vehemently.

"I could never replace your mother," Daniel says softly.

Cassie feels her anger losing steam, but she manages to get in one more angry shot before she is out completely, "You've certainly replaced her in your closet, and in your bed."

Daniel is silent for a couple of seconds, trying to figure out how much to tell his daughter. How much she is going to be able to understand. Some of it she is still too young for, even though she's been acting like an adult for a while now, the rest of it she's just too angry to understand. In the end, he decides to tell her the whole truth unabridged. The parts that she isn't ready for quite yet can lay in her mind and grow until she is ready to hear them.

"Just because Vala is in the same physical place, doesn't mean that she's taking up the same emotional place your mother is. When Sha're died, I thought I would never love again. She begged me, with her dying breath, to be happy again. It still felt like betrayal when I met your mom. Every first that I ever had with your mom felt like I was cheating on Sha're. Can you imagine what would have happened if I gave into those feelings? Can you imagine what I would have missed? I would have missed being in love with the best women that I have ever known, and I would have missed being a parent the four most amazing children ever. I wouldn't be your father if I had ignored Sha're's wish. I would have missed out on the best thing that ever happened to me. I loved Sha're. I loved your mother too. But they're both gone, and I'm not going to let the love I have for dead women prevent me from loving a live women."

"I just don't want you to forget mom," Cassie sobs.

"Oh, sweetheart. I only knew Sha're for a year, and I haven't forgotten her, no matter how much I loved your mother. I'm never going to forget your mother, not with all the wonderful years we had together."

"I just don't want you to end up loving Vala better than you did mom. Like you ended up loving mom more than you did Sha're."

"I didn't love you mother more than I loved Sha're. I loved them differently, that is true. Just like I love each of my kids differently than each other. But I can't say that I love any of my kids more or less than another one. Just like I could never pick out a wife that I loved more than any other wife. I swear to you Cass, no matter how much I fall in love with Vala, it will never make me feel anything less for your mother."

Cassie smiles a little at that, much comforted. "Ok, well you mentioned something before about how you are glad that you ended up with mom so that you could have a lot more kids. I'm hoping that you are not going to feel glad you ended up with Vala for the same reason."

Daniel laughs, "Four kids and three grandkids at my age, I'm pretty sure that my childrearing days are over."

Cassie smiles at this, and the two of them go in for a nice long hug.

He pulls away, and looks down at the boxes, "So, am I going to leave this stuff here, or am I going to take it back to the house with me? It's not like either of my daughters is ever going to be small enough that you can get away with wearing her clothes."

"She was a wee little women, wasn't she," Cassie says with a fond smile.

"But you never could have told it, because of the heals! I couldn't part with them all. I kept the biggest pair of her 'work heals' in the closet with me. I was afraid if I let them out of my sight for very long I would forget how she used to run down the hallway in them. I could never believe it. She had to have been defying a few laws of physics in order not to trip!"

"It's not like enough laws of physics don't get violated where you work," Cassie adds with a giggle.

"So, I'm taking these with me?" he asks.

Cassie nods her head, and gives him a kiss on her cheek.

"So, how are things going with you? Did you have any awkward nanny encounters?"

Cassie blushes, "Actually, everything is going fine in that department. Actually, Rya'c and are dating. Well, no, courting."

"Is there a difference?" Daniel asks with an eyebrow raise.

"Courting is way more serious. You only do it when you think there is a good chance that you're going to end up married to someone."

"Isn't that what dating is?" Daniel asks. He did, after all marry two out of the four women that he has ever dated, and that number just might increase before his life is over.

"Well, not for most people, you know. We've been doing a lot of this meditation where you get to touch each other's souls, and I'm pretty sure that we're meant for one another."

"And you get that from meditation?" Daniel asks skeptically.

"Of course, how else would you figure it out?"

"Well, you could have a conversation with the man before you thoughts start to turn to marriage."

"You don't get it, when you meditate with someone, tek-lo-reem, it is way deeper than conversation. You can figure out all sort of things that way that you could never figure out if you were just talking to someone."

"So you just sit there, and look deeply into one another's eyes, and decide that you want to spend the rest of your life with someone?"

"Of course not, our eyes are closed," Cassie says without the slightest hint of irony that Daniel felt like belonged behind the words.

"Cassie, marriage or even dating is a really serious thing. You have to talk to someone, get to know their thoughts, and opinions. You can't just jump into things."

"You should talk, I've known Rya'c for a lot longer than you've known Vala, and we aren't even sleeping together."

"Well, I'm not planning on marrying Vala."

Cassie stares at him in surprise, "Not ever?"

He shakes his head.

"Does she know that?"

Another shake of the head.

"Well, she probably deserves to."


	114. Part 11 Chapter 6

**The Next Night**

It's quite a domestic scene. Daniel reading a book in bed, and Vala spreading some lotion that she keeps on the bedside table all over her legs before pulling her pajama pants down to cover them.

"I really appreciate you giving me so many drawers and so much closet space," she says as she turns toward him in bed.

"I don't want to get married again, ever," he says abruptly, putting down his book.

Vala misses only a beat, although her heart is nearly bursting within her, "If the closet space is too much, you can have it back. I'll go get her things from the basement, and hang them up for you."

He shakes his head, "It's not about the closet space. You're still married. I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't even a way to divorce among the Ori, and if there is, you probably can't do it when you are on a different planet than your husband. I'm not even sure a marriage between us would be legal, at least not in intergalactic terms. Besides that, I've already been married twice."

"I get it, I'm not exactly a fitting follow up to Sha're and Janet. They definitely deserve to be in a league above me."

"That, my dear, is quite untrue. The point is I've had two wives die. I can't actually deal with the loss of another women that I love. It's probably superstitious nonsense, but I feel like if I were to marry you, I would be tempting the fates to kill you too, and I don't want that to happen. I just wanted you to know, marriage isn't going to be on the horizon for us, and if that's a deal-breaker for you, maybe you want out now."

Vala knows that she doesn't want out now. That even if she knows this ship she is on is doomed to sink, she is going to cling to the mast until the last moment. Some people are worth having your heart broken over. "Ok, so what kind of a future do you picture for us? You don't picture us married, but do you picture us together?"

He smiles, "Yes, I picture us together. I can you see eventually living here full time. I picture us raising the kids. I can see the grandkids coming over. The two of us sitting on rockers on the front porch when we're old and gray talking about how we used to fight aliens."

"Do we have any kids in your vision?" she asks.

His face grows grave, "I've got four children, Vala. I don't know if I'm willing to have any more."

She sighs, and tries not to show what a bitter disappointment this is to her, "I'm not going to lie. I really want kids. You saw how I was after Adria. But you have kids, and grandkids, for crying out loud, it will be enough."

"I don't want you to settle," he whispers.

She smiles, "You Daniel Jackson, are not a consolation prize."

"Vala, I know you want kids. I saw you with Adria. I don't want you to end up missing out on part of your life because of me."

"You have kids," she says smiling.

"I know, but you don't."

"Well, maybe someday your kids will be my kids. Apart from Cassie, she's all grown up, and hates me."

"She doesn't hate you."

"It's ok. It's really to be expected."

"She's the one who told me that I had to talk to you about all of this."

**A Month Later**

"Father, the people of this planet do have goats, do they not?" Rya'c asks.

"Of course, have you not read about them in your studies?" Teal'c asks.

"Indeed, but I have not yet seen any, although I have lived here for several years. I have come to understand that many of the things that are written about in their books are not things that really exist. When we studied Greek mythology in my literature class, it was a most unnerving experience."

"Goats are not creatures of myth."

"Where could I procure one?" Ry'ac asks.

"Son, do you not have enough food to eat without getting this animal?"

"I do not need the animal for food. It is for a ceremony."

Teal'c turns to his son in surprise, "You have not seen Amy for many months. Are you still certain that you would like to spend the rest of your life with her?"

"Amy and I are no longer together, it is with Cassie that I want to spend my life."

Teal'c's brow furrows in surprise. His emotions are becoming more and more human as time goes by. "When did you begin courting her?"

"Almost a month ago."

"Did you not think this was relevant information to give to your guardians?"

"I am passed the age of majority in this country. I was unaware that I was still required to consult with you about my decisions."

"You are no longer required to do so; however, I would like it if you still did," his father tells him.

Rya'c bows his head by way of showing that he agrees with his father.

"What about Cassandra Jackson has led you to believe that she would be a fitting wife for you?"

"Do you not think she is a suitable mate?"

"I think that she is a fine person; however, I am curious as to how the two of you came to be together."

"Through meditation, I came to know how beautiful a soul she had," Rya'c says.

"That is well," Teal'c agrees, and there is no more to be said about it.

**Two Days Later**

"Mom, there is a goat in the living room," Kiesha says as the family enters the house after a shopping trip. Cassie's arms are filled with groceries, but if she shifted, she would be able to see the living room. She just doesn't bother.

Cassie sighs, "What have I told you about you telling stories?"

"When I tell a story, mom, you're going to know, because it's going to begin with 'once upon a time'."

Cassie puts down her bags in order to have a more serious discussion with her daughter about fact and fiction only to discover that there really is a goat in the living room. "What the…" she says, stopping herself just in time.

"No-one ever believes the kids," Kiesha says with a roll of her eyes.

Rya'c enters the room, "Are you not pleased?" he asks concerned.

"Pleased? With the farm animal in the living room? Not really. I'm assuming that thing isn't house-broke. Do they make goat diapers? What am I saying? Just put it on in the back yard, please."

"Should I count this as a rejection?" he says, looking downcast enough, that though he's a Jaffa Cassie figures out that there is more going on here than she is realizing.

"Is this some part of your culture that I don't understand? I don't mean to offend you."

"I'm supposed to give you a goat, and then you're supposed to give me a garland of figs."

"Figs? I'm not even sure where the closest fig tree is, but my guess would be a couple of states away. What holiday is this for anyway?"

"It is not for a holiday, it's a betrothal."

Cassie blinks in surprise, "So you're asking me to marry you?"

"Indeed."

"Did you think of actually asking?"

"I thought the goat did that for me."

"Well, unless it's a talking goat, you would be wrong about that."

"It's not a talking goat. Do you have such things on your planet?"

"You've lived on Earth long enough that you should know that there is no such thing as a talking goat."

"I recently found out that there was no such thing as a minotaur."

"I bet that was a relief."

"Indeed, it was almost as much a relief as it would be if you answered my question about the marriage."

"Marriage!" Keisha squeals as she starts to dance around the adults. Her sisters follow suit, even though it's not quite clear whether or not they actually understand what is going on.

"Only if I answered the question in the way that you want me to answer it. I'm pretty sure a 'no' right about now wouldn't bring relief," she teases.

"I've read your mind, Cassandra," he says, taking a step closer to her.

"I will marry you," she says, placing her head against his. The goat models this behavior by butting his head into Cassie's bottom.

"You know," Cassie says, looking down at him, "Some women get rings."

"I'm going to name him Mr. Nibbles," Keisha declares as the goat starts to bite at Cassie's skirt.

"We're not actually going to keep him," Cassie informs her.

"The engagement will not be in effect if you reject the betrothal gift," Rya'c says with genuine concern.

"You have got to be kidding me! I mean, there has got to be zoning laws that makes it illegal to have a goat here! We don't have the room for it!" Cassie protests.

"I will no longer be required to mow your lawn," Rya'c informs her.

"You were never _required _to mow it in the first place. You make it sound like I'm your mother giving you chores. You volunteered to mow my lawn, and then you insisted when I protested."

"I was made to understand that mowing the lawn was a task reserved for the man of the house in your culture."

"You aren't the man of the house."

"I will be soon."

"We can hire someone to mow the lawn."

"The goat will mow for free."

Cassie lets out a big sigh, "Well, this is what I get for marrying an alien. Come on, Mr. Nibbles, let's see if we can get you a nice little place to sleep set up outside."


	115. Part 11 Chapter 7

**Spoilers for Momento Mori**

**One Month Later**

"Fancy," Vala says, looking around the restaurant that Daniel has just taken her too. If he hadn't already declared in no uncertain terms that he was never going to marry her, she might be preparing herself for a proposal.

"Well, we don't get out of the house much, so I thought I would take you to somewhere nice," Daniel says, moving the vase so he can get a better look at Vala.

"Well, I don't mind telling you that I've been looking forward to this little date all week."

"We date all the time," Daniel defends himself.

"No, we live together, but we don't actually go out to date."

"I'm sorry," he says, sounding wounded.

"No, it's ok. I mean, the kids come first," Vala says, wishing that she hadn't hurt the man that she loved.

"You're important, too," he says, putting a hand across the table to her. "I'm going to have to start making more time for you. We'll have to try to get out a couple of time a month, at least."

Vala grins.

The waiter comes up, and says, "Can I start you off with a drink? Tonight's featured martinis are the chocolate, passionfruit, and shochu plum."

"They sound wonderful. So one of each then?" Vala says.

"Yeah, I think we are going to pace ourselves. She'll do the passionfruit," Daniel says.

When the waiter leaves them alone Daniel and Vala start to talk at the same time. Vala waves for him to go first.

Daniel says, "Um… Look, I know it hasn't been easy for you adjusting to your new life here, learning to trust other people and, most importantly, refusing the temptation to fall back on your old ways. But you have worked hard to make a place for yourself with us and… and dinner tonight is my way of saying thank you. Thank you for… for proving me right when I said we could take a chance on you. And thank you for giving us a chance for us to build a life together."

"I don't know what to say," Vala says, sounding touched.

"Why don't you say what you were going to say before I interrupted?" he asks.

"Okay, I need to go to the bathroom."

Daniel obviously crumbles under her response. He points over her shoulder, and Vala gets up to leave.

-0-

She's gone. He was on a date with her. At the very least he should be able to protect the women he loves when he's out on a date with her.

But she slipped through her fingers, and got kidnapped. Everything in him feels like he's going to fall apart, like he did when Janet died. He can't do that again. His children deserve better than that, and Cassie is too busy to catch his mistakes this time.

When he goes home, he expects his children to ask where Vala is. They don't, though, because even though she spends a lot more time with them than she does in her quarters on base, she doesn't live with them. There are days when she doesn't come, and they think it's just one of those days.

It is three days before her absence is noticed, and then Olivia quietly asks, "Did you and Vala break up?"

"No," Daniel says, trying to get more words through the lump in his throat.

"She's not here," Olivia states.

Daniel nods.

"Dad?" Oliva questions with fear in her voice.

"She was kidnapped. We're looking for her." Other people might have said something more comforting. More than likely something like, "Don't worry, we'll find her." Daniel wasn't willing to risk lying to his children.

Oliva starts to cry, and Daniel pulls her close so her tears fall on his shoulder.

"If she dies, are you going to disappear again like you did when Mom died?" she asks him.

"That's never going to happen again," he assures her, without any qualms about possibly lying.

**A Week Later**

She doesn't remember who she is, but apparently they do. There was the man in the hotel room who told her that she was an alien. She didn't so much believe him. This man, standing before her, is a whole lot easier to believe, "Vala, I know you are scared. But we are not here to hurt you. We are here to help you remember."

She's surrounded, and they are pointing weapons at her. She still knows that she has the upper hand. Her weapon is one that can kill, while she knows that his is not.

"Get out of my way," she commands the man in front of her.

He shakes his head at her.

"Get out of my way or I will shot you," she tells him again.

"You may not remember who you are, but I do, and I know that you are not going to shoot," he tells her with absolute certainty. She can't remember the last time she's been that certain about anything, let alone another human being, and that's not just because of her recent amnesia.

"If I let you go, I know you're going to make yourself disappear. You've been running for so long that it's almost second nature to you. You don't remember it, but you made a decision to stop running. It's over, now it's time to come home."

A few flashes come to her. All of these people, around a table, talking about important things (she remembers that they did that a lot). Leaning on Daniel's shoulder as he helped her into an elevator; she'd been lying to him, she wasn't nearly as tired as she'd been pretending to be. A little girl with blond pig tails (she'd started wearing them so that she would be more like Vala) hiding behind a very large, and very dry-looking book. Two little boys handing her toys.

"Daniel, the kids?" she breathes out. How could she leave them? What kind of mother was she to take off and leave her kids? Even with her memory gone, she still should have known. There should have been some sort of maternal instant or something that made her stay.

"They're fine," he assures her, pulling her into a hug.

"I'm so sorry," she tells him, melting into his strong arms.

"It's going to be all right, everything is going to be all right."

-0-

This wasn't how Daniel intended to reintroduce Vala to his kids. Vala had been out of his children's lives for over a month. He wasn't exactly planning on just dropping in on them with her in tow. He planned on sending Sam or Cam or Jack ahead to let them now that she had been found, but that all of her memories were still a little bit fuzzy.

If he was perfectly honest with himself, he knew that her memories were probably a lot more than 'a little bit' fuzzy. She tried to pretend that she knew a lot more than she did, but Daniel could tell that her memories right now consisted of little more images.

Dr. Lam assured them both that she was likely to make a full recovery, especially now that she was around things that she was familiar with once again.

"Well, then we'd better get home," Vala says cheerfully, with a huge grin on her face.

"Right, home," Daniel says. He's pretty sure that she never called his house that before she lost his memory. It's possible she thought it all the time, and the memory loss is serving more as an inhibition lifter than anything else, but he doesn't really find that all that likely.

As they sit in the car he knows that he has to tell her. He has to explain it to her. "Vala, I have to be honest with you about something, but you have to understand that I really don't want to tell you this…"

Vala is terrified by his face, "Daniel, did something happen to the kids?"

"No, nothing happened to them, but it is about them," he says awkwardly, and then he lets the silence fall upon them for a good long moment. "Vala, they're not really your kids. I mean they are, it's just that technically they're not. I mean…"

Vala laughs, actually laughs at them. "You thought I didn't know that they were just my step kids? Man alive, you had to be nervous!" Then suddenly her laughter dies at a fresher memory. "Except, they're not really even my step kids, are they?"

"They really are," Daniel says softly.

"No, I remember, we're never going to get married. It's ok, though." The first time when she'd said that, he'd believed her. She'd been taken so much by surprise, that her voice sounded genuine when she said it. The second time, there is no mistaking what she is saying for the truth. It is not ok that he wouldn't marry her. Why should it be?

He puts a hand softly on her knee, and turns into his drive way. When they enter the house, the kids barely look up from a craft they are doing with the nanny for a long second. Then Olivia sees her. She gets up, spreading glitter far and wide, and runs half way into Vala's arms. Then she pauses, and looks a bit bashful.

"You were gone a long time," Olivia says.

"I was, honey, but it wasn't my choice. They took my memory away. I would have much rather been here with my family."

It's enough of a reason for Olivia, who flings herself into the women's arms and starts to cry.

"I missed you so much," she says, hugging the girl close, and losing no small amount of moisture out of her own eyes.

"Did you miss me?" Drew asks tentatively at her elbow.

"I did indeed," she says, giving a huge hug before moving on to his older brother.

Will has taken steps away from, instead of toward her. "I missed you, too, sweetheart," she says, extending her arms to him. She doesn't want to push things. She remembers all too well the abrupt way that her own mother-in-law had entered her life. She had never forgiven the women for the first few minutes that she had known her.

"Are you going to leave again?" the little boy asks.

"I am going to do my very best never to leave like that again. I'm still going to go on little trips like your Daddy does, but I don't plan on being gone that long ever again."

The boy slowly walks over to her, and buries his little nose into her shoulder, "That's alright, little man. Everything is going to be ok," she assures him.

-0-

Daniel stands awkwardly in the bedroom as Vala finishes up her nighttime routine. "Are you coming to bed?" she asks, tapping the spot next to her.

"I don't know how much exactly of your memories have come back. If you'd rather that I spent the night on the couch, I wouldn't mind."

"I have enough memories back that I really miss what you and I do when we are in the same bed," she says with a wicked grin.

A grin comes to Daniels' face as well, but then he schools it away. "I want it to mean something. If it's just sex to you, right now, I want to wait until you have enough memories that it's something more."

"I thought we established that it was never 'just sex' between the two of us the first time that we were together," she says.

"Well, all right, then," Daniel says, crawling toward her across the bed on his knees. Their mouths are just about to touch when Daniel feels someone jump on to the bed behind him. It's Drew. His brother is standing tentatively at the door.

"Drew woke up, and wouldn't believe me that Vala really came home," he explains.

"Come on, then, into bed with you," Vala says sweetly. Daniel just barely manages to stifle a frustrated groan.

Will bounces into bed, and Daniel turns to see Olivia at the door, "I heard them get up, and I know I'm way too old to crawl into my parent's bed, but…"

"Well, if your sister wasn't too old at eighteen, I don't supposed you've made the mark yet, honey," Daniel says, extending his arm to her.

There is a lot of rustling and jostling in the next few minutes as five people strive to make themselves comfortable in a king bed.

Suddenly, just as Vala is about to drift off to sleep for the first time she realizes something. She has a family, a real, proper family for the first time in her life. They are a family of orphans, really, but it works, and it's more beautiful perhaps that way. They all understand the glory of a family when they have all had ones shattered before.

"I love you," she says, and there is not a person in the bed who isn't sure that it was meant for them alone.


	116. Part 11 Chapter 8

**The Next Day**

"I liked the new moves in the shower this morning," Vala says. She and Daniel had shared the shower right after he dropped his kids off at school. "You've been taking sex lessons while I was gone or something?"

Daniel freezes in the brushing of his teeth, and quickly spits in the sink, "I didn't cheat on you."

"I was gone for a month, and you had no idea if I was even still alive. It wouldn't have been cheating," Vala says.

"I didn't have sex the entire time between my wife's death and our first time. I think I can deal with a month."

"I'm not used to guys being faithful to me," she says.

"Get used to it," he smirks, kissing her. Then he pulls away. "Ok, I was going to tell you this at the restaurant the other day, but…"

"… I sort of got kidnapped, and went AOL for a couple of months," Vala says.

"You mean AWOL, and yeah. I was going to wait for a fancy dinner tonight. But I've waited a month, and I don't want to wait anymore."

"Ok, what," she says.

"I love you," he says.

"Am I supposed to be surprised by that? I'm pretty sure you've told me that on several different occasions."

"Would you wait for it? I wanted you to know that I am ready to commit to this long term, you and me. I'm still not talking about marriage, but I want to have a not-a-wedding."

"A what?" Vala asks trying to keep her smirk inside.

"It's like a wedding…"

"… but not," Vala guesses.

"We wouldn't get married. But we'd gather all of our friends together. We'd dance, and have cake."

"Cake?" Vala asks.

"Well, we have to have cake if Jack's coming."

"I just don't see the point, darling," Vala says.

He comes over, and gently touches her face, "I want everyone, including you, to know that the two of us is going to be forever. I want to do some legal things, too. I want to do some paperwork that makes sure that you would get the house if anything was ever going to happen to me."

"Daniel…" she starts to protest.

"I also want, I mean I get it if you say no, but I'd like you to take the kids. I know it's a lot, three kids would be legally yours. Cassie's too old to be yours legally, but…"

"Of course I'd include her. You're never too old to need parents. It's just… aren't there people more qualified? I mean, I'd be honored, I just don't think that I'm very worthy of it."

"Vala, you're their mother now. There is no one that I trust more."

"Mother?" she says in shock, "So that's what it means. This whole not-a-marriage?"

"We are family now," he says.

"Well, then, my dear Daniel, I accept this not-a-proposal."

Daniel grins. "So along with this not-a-proposal comes a not-a-ring."

"Is it shiny?"

"It is," he says, rushing over to his dresser to grab a black box much larger than one which would hold a ring. He opens it to reveal a necklace.

"It's beautiful," she says.

He walks up behind her to put it on.

"You're good at that," Vala admires.

"What can I say, I have two daughters. I've gotten lots of practice."

She stares at her reflection in the mirror. "Thank you, my not-a-fiancé."

He kisses her neck, and wraps his arms around her.

**Three Weeks Later**

"No, there will be ten of us coming for Christmas," Olivia says on the phone just as Daniel walks into the room. That's odd, his friends at the SGC certainly know how many people from his family to expect for the annual gingerbread extravagance, why did Olivia think it was necessary to tell them?

"You're forgetting Rya'c and Vala," the girl says.

She shakes her head into the phone, "No, they're not friends of ours, Rya'c is Cassie's fiancée, and Vala… she's a little hard to define. I guess she's just Dad's girlfriend, but she lives with us, and," Olivia is about to explain the not-a-wedding they are planning for a couple of weeks from now, but she can't quite figure out how.

Suddenly Daniel realizes with horror that his daughter must be talking to his MOTHER-IN-LAW.

"Olivia, give me the phone!" he exclaims, diving across the living room to snatch it from her arms. "Vala is not living with us, and she's not coming to Christmas."

There is a pause on the other end of the phone so long that Daniel begins to wonder if he didn't mistake who his daughter was talking too, or maybe perhaps the women already hung up as soon as she heard that he was cheating on her daughter so soon after her death.

Neither of those things are true, and he soon hears the calm, unoffended voice of his mother-in-law saying, "Daniel, you're not doing something wrong if you've found someone else to be with. Janet's been gone a long time. You're not even doing something wrong if you've found someone else to marry or live with."

"Vala and I are not going to get married, and she's not living here," he assures the women.

"Ok," she says with a smile on her lips. "Still, if she's around often enough that your daughter THINKS you're living with you, regardless of whether or not you actually are, she's more than welcome to come to Christmas."

"I think that would be pretty awkward," he mumbles.

"Well, I think we can show hospitality a little better than that," Mrs. Fraiser says, sounding miffed for the first time in the conversation.

"That isn't what I meant. I thought you guys might feel awkward," he says softly.

"Daniel, if my grandbabies have a new mother in their life, I would really like to meet her."

Daniel flinches, "I just don't think you're going to approve." The more nervous Vala got, the more she tended to flirt. He could almost see her sitting on Great-Uncle Albert's lap right now.

"This isn't about me passing judgement on you, Daniel. This is about me wanting to know my grandkids. If they have someone knew of great importance in their life, I want to know her too. Of course, if you decide not to bring her I would completely understand. I would still love to see you and the kids over the holidays, and bless me Cassie's gone and given me great-grandchildren already. Did you tell her that I was too young for that?"

"I also told her that I was too young to be a grandfather," he laughs.

"What about her gentleman, do we like him?"

"We do," Daniel says.

"All right, I hope you bring everyone up, because I would hate to think about this girl sitting alone on Christmas. Does she have family?"

"None that she's close to," Daniel says quickly. A truer phrase was never uttered. Vala's closest family was light years away physically, and about as far emotionally.

"Well, like I said, I hope you bring her, and I'll see you all in a week for Christmas."

**A Week Later**

Daniel walks through the door of Janet's aunt's house first. His youngest granddaughter is on his hip, and he is holding his oldest son by the hand. Relatives greet them at the door, and quickly take the kids from him. Vala comes through the door next, holding Drew. Seeing what happened before she starts to hand the kid over to the women who comes to her. The women holds her in a hug for a long time during the exchange though.

"Welcome."

When she is passed on, minus the kid, it is only to another set of arms. It's the fourth exchange when someone asks.

"Who is she?"

"Daniel's new girl," her former hugger says, and the new one gives her a little extra squeeze.

-0-

"Can I give you some help with that?" Vala asks, entering the kitchen.

"Honey, you're a guest, go sit down," the women responds.

Vala starts drying a dish anyway. "You're her sister, right, Janet's?" Vala asks softly.

"I am. My name's Mary."

"I'm sorry. You probably hate that I'm here. I can't imagine what it's like. I didn't want to come, but your mother insisted…" Vala begins.

"I would have insisted too," Mary says. "I can see why you'd think we'd be mad. Jealous for Janet's sake. That would be stupid, though, because you can't keep being married to a corpse, and I wouldn't want Daniel to try. He started off as my brother-in-law, it's true. But the second that little orphan Daniel walked in here, we pounced. He's my brother now, and I don't see any reason not to love his new… relationship undefined partner," she says with a raised eyebrow.

Vala dries a dish in silence.

"Is it long-term, this undefined thing?" Mary presses.

"I think so," Vala says.

"Good, those kids deserve long term. So you're my new sister then?" Mary says quickly.

Vala gapes at her in shock.

"Well, that's the logical conclusion, if you're with Daniel; or at least sister-in-law."

"I've never really had a sister before. Actually, this whole family thing is pretty new for me," Vala confesses.

"Another orphan?"

"Not quite… my dad's still around, but I doubt I'll ever see him again."

"We're good with the orphans."

"You really are," Vala agrees. She's never felt so welcome anywhere in her entire life.

-0-

"I can't believe they put us in the same bedroom. It's so awkward!" Daniel complains as he lays next to her in bed.

"We sleep in the same room all the time, Daniel."

"I know, but I don't want them to know that."

"They know we're sleeping together, darling, and they are ok with it."

"I know, and that's weird isn't it?"

"You know, it's really not," Vala says leaning against him, "In fact, I think we should invite them to our not-a-wedding."

Daniel is silent for a few seconds, causing Vala to look at him. As soon as she did, she wished she didn't, "You don't want to do that. That's the reason for this not-a-wedding. You don't want them to know that you stooped as low as me," she says, getting up. She's not really sure where she is going to go. At home, there would be lots of options. She could sleep on the couch, or bunk with Olivia, or go back to the base. Here, the beds are full.

"You've got it wrong. I'm not ashamed of you, I'm ashamed of me. I wanted to love her forever. She deserves to be love forever. I can't admit to them that I love someone else."

She lays down next to him. "Ok, but they would love you anyway."

"I'm not their family," he mutters.

"I don't know. Mary called you her brother, right before she offered me a position as her sister," Vala says.

"It's weird. You'd think people who had a lot of family wouldn't be that keen on acquiring more, but they are."

"It's like you have to practice love. Like those of us who didn't have it… we're all empty, and have nothing to give. It's the ones who have everyone to love that give it out freely."

"You've got love now," he says, snuggling her into his side. "We'll invite them all, but we're going to be understanding if they don't come."

"Thank you!" she exclaims, smacking a kiss on his cheek.


	117. Part 11 Chapter 9

**Spoilers for "The Quest Part II"**

**Two Weeks Later**

"Well?" Vala says, stepping out of the walk-in closet.

"I think we're going to have to call that a wedding dress," Olivia says, looking up from her book.

"It's a not-a-wedding dress," Vala corrects, taking a twirl around the room.

"If it's not a wedding, why are we here?" Cassie asks.

"Maybe we'll ask the same question at your wedding," Will says.

Vala takes his chin in her hands, "Watch that cheek, little one."

Olivia stands next to Vala, and says seriously, "I'm happy about this whole not-a-wedding thing, Vala."

"Thank you, love," Vala says kissing her.

"Right, now we have a not-a-step-mom," Cassie says with a sarcastic role of her eyes.

"Watch that cheek!" Drew says imitating Vala.

Vala walks over next to where Cassie is sitting, and says, "Honey, I know you don't agree with this. That's ok, you are allowed your opinion. I just want you to know that I don't feel the same way. I love you, and I am so glad to be entering a family that includes you."

Cassie gives her a quick fake smile, and then returns to her book.

Vala knows rejection when she feels it, she's had enough of it in her life. So she turns to do her make-up like she hasn't noticed. "I had a stepmother, you know. A wicked witch of a women."

"Like in the story," Drew says.

"Which story?" Will asks.

"All of them," Olivia says.

"Stepmothers are always evil in stories, but not in real life," Vala says, glancing at Cassie in the mirror, who is not reading anymore. "Sometimes a stepmother is just someone who fell in love with a family instead of a person. Sometimes they know they can never replace a mother, but they want to love you anyway."

Vala and Cassie's eyes meet in the mirror, and Cassie gives her just the smallest of nods. She might not be willing to accept Vala, but it's good for her siblings, she can see that. She's not going to ruin the day.

Cassie hears the sound of Aaliyah crying down the hallway. "Mommy!"

Cassie goes to the doorway, and retrieves her children.

"Oh, lord, I'm about to be a grandmother," Vala says taking a deep breath.

Behind the children was not only Ry'ac, who everyone expected, but also Mary. "So, I was thinking about how you told me at Christmas that you weren't exactly close to your father, and I was wondering if he was going to be here today," she says as soon as she entered the room.

"No," Vala admits.

"Ok, so I know that Daniel's father is dead, and my dad offered to walk you down the aisle."

Vala's eyes well up with tears, "That is unbelievably generous, really. I actually had a family friend, Teal'c, the usher that thinks he's a bouncer, offer as well. But we're not really doing the traditional walk down the aisle."

"Ah, right, it's not-a-wedding," Mary says.

"Tell your dad thank you for me, though," Vala says as the other women disappears out of the room.

-0-

The music begins. It's a jaunty little song from Daniel's Middle Eastern heritage. Vala decided that she liked that a lot better than any of the more modern music the pair listened to in preparation for the ceremony.

Then, the two of them walk in arm-in-arm. There is no-one to give them away. There is no pretending that they are separate until the wedding brings them together, everyone there knows that they have been more or less living together for a while.

After them comes their children. They were going to do it in age order, but that caused some difficulty with the grandkids, so they decided to do it in reverse order. Drew, Will, Olivia, and Cassie all in a neat little row. Cassie has Ry'ac at her elbow, because engaged, the family had decided, was close enough to count for an almost-wedding. Behind Cassie walk her three grandkids.

When the family reaches the middle of the yard, they stop and turn, to face the little audience.

"I want to thank you all for coming today," Daniel says to the crowd, "And more than that, I want to thank each and every one of you for being a part of our lives. We appreciate the way you have all embraced the rather non-traditional thing that we are doing today, and more than that, the non-traditional way that we are leading our lives. In case you haven't noticed, our family is a little bit weird," and that, ripples of laughter come from the audience. "So there aren't going to be any vows today. We just wanted everyone here to know, that we are planning on being a family forever. We love each other," he puts an arm around his not-a-wife, and squeezes his shoulders, "And that's not going to change."

"Just be glad you don't have to sit through the boring church part, but can get to the fun drinking and dancing part right away," Vala says, turning to her husband, and waiting for the music to begin.

"'Fer crying out loud, you've got to at least kiss him," Jack calls out.

Vala has no intention to obey, until she realizes the Siler, the operator of the music, agrees with him. He is going to withhold the music until the two of them lock lips.

She turns and lays something on her husband which gives Jack flashbacks of the last kiss with Sha're. It's the kind of kiss that just about makes Daniel disappear for a couple of minutes.

The music begins, and with it the dancing.

**One Week Later**

Stupid Earth food. Well, she supposed she couldn't actually blame the Earth food, because Daniel had told her that no-one actually ate the strange concoction that she and Olivia had created. She'd take the girl shopping. That always ended with trouble, but usually that trouble was cute, like a new pair of shoes for the pre-teen or a top for herself. This time they went _grocery_ shopping, and she didn't say no to a single junk food the girl had been forbidden by her health-conscious dad. She was the girl's not-a-stepmother now, after all.

The end result had been an entire cart worth of crap her husband would never eat. They put it all on the table when they got home, and just stated combing it. Vala's personal favorite had been a marshmallow cream/spray cheese/spam mixture spread on a Dorito.

So throwing up was kind of a given.

Still, it was days after this disaster, and Olivia still isn't affected. The last time she felt like this was…

No.

She couldn't be pregnant. She couldn't be, because Daniel had said no more children. How could she choose between her not-a-husband and her baby? Well, she couldn't really, but it would never be a straight choice. If she chose her husband, she would have to kill the baby before they found out about it. If she hadn't done that with a kid she had no idea HOW she'd conceived, she wasn't going to do that with this one. If she didn't pick Daniel, he at least got to live. Even if their separation might kill her.

She knew how this had happened. She'd gone missing for a month, and not used birth control during that time. She'd only found out later that she should have used back up protection for her first week back on the pill.

So, here she was, pregnant, and she should leave now. There was no use in staying, now that she'd decided that they had to go. Every moment spent with him now was just going to cause her more pain, knowing that eventually she was going to have to let it all go.

Still, she knew that she wasn't going to leave, at least not now. She would find a way to hide it for a long time. A really long time.

She returns to the bed, where Daniel is sitting, looking mildly concerned. "Did you eat more of that 'cheese' and 'meat'?" he asks with a liberal use of air quotes.

She could agree with him, for now, but she's going to need a bigger lie later on, and she might as well deploy it now.

"Actually, no. This has a little bit different cause. I went to the doctor today," she begins.

He puts the book down, and gives her his full attention, which unnerves her ever so slightly. "It turns out I've developed a condition. It's nothing serious," she says, feeling guilty at his panic, "But it comes from being around alien bacteria for so long. I mean, alien to me. Anyway, it's caused a super-growth of bacteria in my gut, and it's going to be making me nauseous sometimes."

"Can't they do anything about it? I mean, we have antibiotics."

"Right, but they affect my body differently, because I'm an alien."

"So how long is this going to last?" he asks.

Vala isn't sure what to say. How long is she going to need an excuse for? How long is she going to be able to stay with him before the whole thing is painfully obvious, and she is forced to leave? Better just stay on the safe side. "Probably forever."

"So, you're just going to blow chunks forever, that's their plan? Would it help if we move off-world? Back to your home planet, or one of the worlds you spent time on before?"

"You'd move across the galaxy for me?" she asks in shock.

"Of course," he says.

She shakes her head, "No, I've got it now, I don't think there is anything that can be done about it." That is the first honest thing she's said the whole conversation.

"Maybe you'll have to cut down the disgusting food combos, and see if that doesn't lessen it a little," he says, opening his arms up for a hug.

She slides into his arms, comfortably, and says, "I don't know, this is probably going to increase the awful food combos. I mean, if you're going to be sick, you might as well deserve it.

**One Month Later**

Leave it to her not-a-husband. If he happens to see a brain sucking machine that nearly killed Colonel O'Neill on more than one occasion, it's a good bet that he's going to stick his head inside. You know, as long as it's for the good of the universe or whatever.

Now her husband was sharing his body with Merlin. She doesn't know what he thought that meant for their sex life, but she wasn't THAT kinky, so she hoped they got this figured out before they got home.

Two people in one body was just overall too Goa'uld like for her taste.

Daniel takes a break from his work to sit down, and she kneels in front of him, "Daniel, are you all right?" she asks. She doesn't know what she would do if he said no. She's not really in the position to get him help right now.

"I know you," he says, sounding completely confused.

"Well of course you do, silly. We're practically married!" she teases.

He puts a hand on her face, "I had the strangest dream; everything was covered in ice." Daniel is breathing hard, and looking worse than Vala felt when she went through the gate this morning with a nasty case of morning sickness to contend with beforehand. His eyes glaze over, and for a moment he's completely gone.

He's brought back by Cam's rough, "Jackson!"

Daniel flinches, and then asks, "What's going on?"

"We're losing you, that's what," Vala says, trying to keep the tears out of her eyes, "Every time you come back from that machine it gets a little bit worse. And don't try to tell me that you are fine."

"No there is just too much in my head, I'm a little confused," Daniel admits.

"You have to fight it," Vala says strongly.

"No, no that's the thing. I have to let it happen. That is the only way that I can build Merlin's weapon."

Vala looks over at Mitchel hoping that he is going to rescue her. He looks like his heart is breaking, but he doesn't make a motion to stop Daniel as he pushes himself up on the couch. He just give him a brief pat on the back as he passes.

Vala walks over to the leader of the team, and pleads, "Hey, tell him that he doesn't have to do this. He'll listen to you."

"Please, what team have you been on?" Mitchell says with a laugh, "Besides, we need this one."

Yes, they always needed something. They would always need something. "What makes you think that we will be allowed to use it?"

"Vala, shut up for once. We have to take that risk."

"This whole team, it's just noble sacrifice for you people, isn't it?" she asks as Mitchell's form starts to retreat from her.

"I'm sorry, us? What about you?" Mitchell says with an accusation in his voice.

"What?" Vala says completely confused.

"When you flew that cargo ship into the gap into the supergate, you knew quite well that you might not come out of the other side alive."

"No, that was different," she says, turning away from him. He grabs onto her arm before she can make an escape.

"It was only different because you were the one taking the risk," he warns her. She tries to get out of his grip, but gives up before too long, "Well, now you know that the hard part of this team is not risking your own life. It's watching your friends take chances with theirs. Congratulations. Now you are really one of us."

He walks away from her, knowing that she is going to need a minute. She goes over and stands next to Daniel as he works. She might not actually be able to make it easier for him, but she can at least keep him company as he works.

-0-

She'd left him. She'd left him to die. She'd left him to be killed by her own child. She could blame herself as much as she liked, but deep down she know the truth. There was nothing that she could have done.

Now, she had to go back, and break the news to his children.


	118. Part 11 Chapter 10

**Spoilers for "The Quest Part II", "Line in the Sand"**

His children don't ask Vala right away. It's not the first time that Daniel has stayed late working on a translation while she came home to take care of the children. She is, after all, less important than he is.

Then she cries over the spaghetti-os, and half of the story is already told for her.

Will wraps his arms around her middle, and says, "Daddy's in the infirmary?"

"He's missing," she corrects softly.

"They're looking for him?" Drew asks.

"We are, honey. He's not just missing, he was kidnapped, by my daughter, actually," Vala says, with guilt suddenly crashing in on her.

"Well, that's OK, then; Adria isn't going to hurt him," Drew says cheerfully, and with complete confidence.

"I'm not so sure about that," Vala says, finding herself being far more honest that she wants to be.

"She's your daughter," Will says, scrunching up his forehead.

"I know, but she isn't my daughter like you are your daddy's son, baby. I never lived with her. I never got the chance to teach her right from wrong. She came out fully-formed, and already doing all kinds of bad things."

"She wouldn't kill him, would she?" Drew asks, horrified.

"Hopefully the Air Force is going to find him before she has a chance to do anything," Vala says, giving them a little smile, before heading back to the spaghetti-os, which are much the worse for her distraction.

**The Next Day**

Cassie bursts into the house like a hurricane with three children, a thousand bags, and a goat in tow. "Why didn't someone call me right away?"

Vala's stomach sinks. Daniel had made sure that she knew he wanted his eldest daughter included in everything. She just hadn't really thought he meant the disasters as well as the good times. She hadn't wanted to worry the young woman, because she was still trying to convince herself that it was nothing.

"I was hoping that he'd be found by now," Vala tells the frantic girl before her.

"I should have been here last night. They shouldn't have had to go through being without their father alone!" she says roughly.

"We weren't alone, Vala was here," Olivia says, getting between her angry sister and the women who she has come to think of like a mother.

"I mean family. When their father is missing in action, they really need to have some family around," Cassie amends, having the decency to look a little bit bashful.

"Vala is family; don't you remember the ceremony?" Drew asks.

"It wasn't a wedding, so she isn't family," Cassie says, "Now, I brought everything to have the kids stay here for a couple of days."

"Including a goat?" Vala asks.

"Take the goat outside, Keish," Cassie commands, without taking her eyes off the women in front of her.

"Look, honey, I really appreciate the gesture, but you have three kids to take care of. If you take care of them, too, than it would be six."

"I could handle it."

"I'm sure you could, but you don't have to. I've got this, Cassie."

"I'm pretty sure that Dad would want me to take care of them," Cassie insists.

"Honey," Vala says softly, "Can I speak to you in the other room?"

Cassie shakes her head.

Vala closes her eyes for a couple seconds, and then takes a deep breath. "Right before the not-a-marriage, your father and I signed some papers. If anything would ever happen to him, death, missing in action, whatever, I am the children's legal guardians until he returns."

Cassie takes a step back in horror, "He choose you over me?"

"No, honey, it wasn't like that," Vala gives Olivia a glance that causes the girl to take all of the children out of the room. "Cass, the reason he didn't want you to take them was because he still thinks of you as a child."

"I have children. I've raised his children, when he was too out of it to do it himself," Cassie says, spitting the words out of her mouth.

"I know that, sweetie. Your dad knows that. He just didn't want you to have to do that ever again. He even asked me to include you in the kids. He wanted to make sure that I knew you were supposed to be mine, too; not legally, of course. It's too late for that; you are, as you said, grown up. Still, he wanted to make sure that you would always have a family to come home to. He loves you, Cassie."

"I'm a good mother," Cassie sobs out of the blue.

Vala pulls her into her arms, "Of course you are, honey! You're an amazing mother! Aaliyah has made more progress in the last couple of months than she has in years before. Those little girls are so lucky to have you in their lives! Your siblings are lucky to have you too. They need a big sister; they are really going to need a big sister if your father dies. They just don't need you to be their mother."

"You're not their mother, either," Cassie says with whatever venom is left in her voice.

"No, I'm not. I might not have the parenting skills your father has, or even the ones you have. I love them, and I would do anything for them. Maybe that's not enough. Maybe that's not fair, but it's a whole hell of a lot more than I got when I was a kid."

"You're a good step-mom," Cassie says grudgingly. It's the best that she can offer Vala right now. "They are lucky to have you."

"I'm not going to say no to a little bit of help right now. Even a lot of help. I just don't want you disrupting the lives of your little ones for the sake of these kids. They are going to be fine."

"What about Dad?" Cassie asks, terrified of the answer.

Vala shakes her head, "Don't give up on your father, at least not yet. He's just kidnapped."

"Can we stay for dinner?" Cassie asks.

"You and your kids always have a place at this table, you don't even have to ask."

**A Week Later**

Tomin. She never thought that she would see him again. What was she supposed to say to him? I only married you because it was better than death? The fact that you murder innocent people is a real turn-off for me?

She knows that she probably won't have to say anything at all. Tomin comes from a culture where losing your good name is the worst thing that could ever happen to you. He was born without a good name, because he had a stupid limp. Then, just when he was starting to get a little bit of street cred, his wife goes and leaves him. There could be no greater dishonor that that.

He saves her, though. Whatever was between them, there must be a little bit of it left, because he saves her. Right before he orders the murder of innocent people. She screams for him to stop, but her opinion doesn't have an effect on him anymore, if it ever even did.

He walks into the room on the ship. He looks for a moment like the man she tried to love, the man she almost loved, all those months on the Ori planet. The man she selected to be the father of her child.

Now here she is, accidently pregnant, yet again, watching him enter the room.

Are she and her baby going to die without Daniel ever knowing about it? She'd been regretting the fact that she hadn't told him ever since he'd gone missing. Of course, it was probably for the best; after all, he was going to make her leave anyway. Then his children would have been all alone when their father went missing.

Well, they are all alone anyway, aren't they? Now that she is going to be killed by her ex-husband.

Not alone; they have Cassie and Ry'ac. Six kids is a lot, but if anyone can make it work, those crazy kids can.

A crazy thought comes into Vala's mind. Maybe she could just pretend that this child that is growing within her is the will of the Ori. Maybe she could say that the Orici needed a sister. It wasn't likely that he'd know the difference. At least not until after the kid was born, or maybe years down the road. Maybe her kid would have a father here.

No, she'd rather her kid have Daniel as a father, even if he was dead, or wanted nothing to do with it, than to have Tomin as a father.

At least Daniel never murdered anyone, or tried to take over an entire galaxy.

"Why are you still wearing the clothes of a blasphemer?" he asks in a cold and even tone.

"If I put on the dress and say, 'hallowed are the Ori', will you stop murdering innocent people?" she asks. He turns on his heels more quickly than he could have before the Ori cured whatever was wrong with him. "Tomin, wait," she calls after him.

He stops, but he refuses to turn back toward her. Her survival instinct tells her to make love speech. It wouldn't all be a lie. She had almost loved him several times during their marriage. If she hadn't met Daniel before they got married it was possible that they could really fall in love.

"Tomin, I know that you don't really have any reason to believe me. I've lied to you a lot of times. The thing is, I met someone, someone else. We're married," Vala knows that she is stretching the truth, right after she tried to convince Tomin that she wasn't lying. She just can't imagine making a man with his religious views understand her not-a-marriage with the man she loves. As time goes on she understands it less, and less herself. "His wife died before I met him, and he's got four kids. I'm actually carrying his fifth right now. He's missing in action right now, and I'm all those children have. If I don't come back…"

It's another stretch of the truth. Vala knows that Daniel's kids have a sister, as well as cousins, and aunts, and grandparents who would all be willing to take them in at a moment's notice. She even knows who they would go to in order. Still, it's not a lie that they would be better off with her. The poor things have already been through enough loss, especially the older ones.

"You could convert to the true religion," he says, "You could cause them to convert, and save their souls."

Vala is past the morning sickness part of her pregnancy, but those words make her almost lose her breakfast. She can't imagine making those sweet innocent babes bow before a false god, not her kids.

Tomin leaves the room, and Vala is left alone with nothing but the Book of Origin for entertainment.

-0-

Sam's mind springs clear for a moment. She's injured. Badly injured. She's got to get help, because if she doesn't get help soon, she's going to die

Then she remembers, there is no way that she could get help. Ok, death it is, then. "On my laptop, there is a file," she says, using up far more energy than she thought she would when she started the sentence.

"You want me to get it?" Mitchell asks helpfully.

She shakes her head no, not being willing to go through the effort of talking again just yet. "In my personal directory, letters mostly," she says.

"Sam," he says softly.

"There is one to the kids, and some other people. The password is 'fishing'."

"Ah, see," he says, coming to sit next to her, "Now you are going to have to change the password. Sam, don't you give up on me. We just lost Jackson. I'm not going to lose another member of your team. I'm not going to go home, and look your kids in the face, and explain to them that their mother isn't coming home."

"Jack will do that," she says, trying to make a joke of it. It's a morbid joke, but that sort of thing is allowed when you are about to die.

It's true, he knows. He may be a part of SG-1. He may even be the leader of the team, but he was not a part of the family that came along with the team. When Jackson went missing in action, he'd offered to go home and help break the news to the man's children. Vala had declined. He'd asked who was in charge of taking care of the kids when Daniel wasn't around. He'd even offered to help, after telling them that he'd yet to have a successful babysitting experience. Everyone had just looked at him like he was nuts. They'd all known that Vala was the caregiver, the guardian.

"The mind is a powerful thing, Sam. Sometimes belief makes all the difference in the world. You just don't give up. Tell yourself whatever you have to. Just believe that you are going to make it, Sam."

-0-

Tomin saved Vala. He put her on the rings, and whisked her away to safety. She should be more grateful than she is. The thing is, she knows it has nothing to do with her, not really. Maybe it does, because she got all mouthy, and made him question his believes. He didn't save her because he loved her. He saved her because he knew what the Ori was doing was wrong. She wasn't foolish enough to believe that it was a complete change. She didn't expect him to go around preaching religious tolerance now. He'd probably still be part of more than his share of murders.

Still, Bra'tac and Teal'c had killed a lot of people when was first prime, and that didn't undo the ones that they saved by being first prime.

She also got to live. Was it selfish to be so happy about that? Maybe she could blame it on the baby that was growing inside of her. She could pretend that the reason she was over the moon happy was her child.

It would be a lie, of course. Life had never smelt so good to her before.


	119. Part 11 Chapter 11

**Spoilers for "Line in the Sand" "Road Not Taken" and "The Shroud"**

Jack has given his wife a little bit of time. He really didn't want to burst in on her the first minute she was in the hospital. He was a General, and Generals didn't hover.

He waits until all the tests are done, and then he takes a place beside her hospital bed without making a sound. She's sleeping, and after nearly dying she needs her rest.

Her eyes open, and she looks at him, "Do you think that I am getting too old for this?"

"You're not old, Sam," he says, sensing a trap. This feel a bit too much like the 'do I look fat in this dress' question.

"It's not really about age. At least not physical age. I've been brought back from the dead enough times that age matters a lot less for me than it would for most people. Maybe tired is the right word. Do you think I'm getting a bit too tired of saving the world, risking my life, almost dying?"

Her husband sits on the end of the bed, "I think that you are the only one who could answer that question. Just know that I am going to support you whatever you decide to do."

She smiles at him, "I think I'm ready for a lab job."

"Well, as your boss, I can push that request through, provided you are really sure that is what you want to do."

"I am really sure," she tells him.

**One Month Later**

She was supposed to be safe. She stopped going through the gate so that she wouldn't have to risk her life anymore. Then, she disappears from her lab.

Well, she might not have disappeared so much as become invisible. It was something that had happened before, more than once actually. When he explained it all to his kids, Ty eagerly said, "Where is she? Right here in the living room?"

"Well, honey, we don't know. We don't actually know that she is out of phase," Jack says.

"Well, if she's not out of phrase that means she's what? Dead?" Hannah asks with her eyes wide and full of panic.

"I don't know sweetie. I think there are probably thousands of options: dead and out of phase are just two of them," Jack says. He finds himself really wishing that his scientist wife was here to explain it all to his kids.

"But if she's out of phase, she's all alone, right? I mean, Dr. Lee didn't go with her like he did when they invented the Merlin device right?"

Jack shakes his head.

"Well, if I was all alone, and no-one could see or hear me, I'd be pretty lonely. I figure that she would either be stuck in the room she went out of phase in, or she'd be following you around. So, if we were to go to the room that she went out of phase in we'd be sure to be where she is."

"_If_ she's out of phase," Hannah adds.

"Right, well, if she isn't out of phase, talking to an empty room for the couple of days it takes to figure this out isn't going to hurt anything. Come on, Dad, you have to take us to base!"

Jack loves his children's faith that all of this is going to be figured out in a couple of days. He isn't so sure himself. Oh, well, he can always pull the plug on this scheme when it becomes apparent that it is futile.

**Two Weeks Later**

"You've got to be kidding. You guys honestly talked to an empty room for two weeks?" Sam asks her children in disbelieve.

"It was logical that you were out of phase," Ty pouts. His happiness at his mother coming home is somewhat overshadowed by the fact that his scientific theory was proven wrong.

"We're glad you are home," Jenny says, throwing her arms around her mother's neck.

**One Month Later**

There he is… her not-a-husband. Well, at least it is sort of Daniel. At this point, there is a lot more Merlin and Prior in him than anything else. His body is changed, his mind is changed, is there anything left in there that is actually Daniel?

Well, of course there must be. After all, he had convinced the villagers to join Origin without threatening a single life. Still, if you do the wrong thing in the right way isn't it still wrong? Her Daniel would never try to convert people to any religion. Let alone one that killed so many of its followers.

Then he starts talking, and she finds out that her daughter hit on Daniel. Great, a little incest thrown into the mix as well. Of course, Adria wasn't Daniel's daughter, she and Daniel hadn't begun a relationship until AFTER Adria, but she was still his step-daughter. Well, almost.

Anyway, it was certainly close enough to qualify as creepy.

What right had she to be distracted by petty jealousy? She should be focused on the man before her, and what horrors of danger he was in. There was no time for thinking about what her daughter had tried to do to him (thank goodness he was at least unwilling!)

She sits on his lap. She desperately needs to feel close to him. She missed him so much when she was gone. All the more, because of her pregnancy, even if he didn't know about it.

"What the hell is going on?" he demands.

"This and that, you know the usual. You'll never believe what is happening on _One life to Live,"_ she teases knowing that Daniel feels that soap operas are by the far the lowest form of entertainment ever known.

"You know, I really hate to push the issue here, but I do have a deadline," he says.

She flinches, and looks away from him. She knows that all too well. She just hopes the deadline is when he turns back into himself, and not when some person in his government pushes a button that makes him disappear.

"You believe me don't you?" he asks softly.

"I'd like to, Daniel," she says softly.

He looks away from her and takes a deep breath, all full of betrayal and gloom, "How are the kids?" he asks, looking back at her and obviously changing the subject.

"They're ok."

-0-

"This is unnecessary," Daniel says with a role of his eyes as he lays down in the infirmary bed with his arms crossed.

"Daniel, you passed out," Sam points out.

"After conquering some technology that no-one has been able to beat _with your mind," _Vala points out.

"Just humor us, for a couple of hours," Lam says with a smile.

Everyone files out, but Vala stays. Standing near him. He turns his head toward her and smile. He still smiles like Daniel. The Prior look is gone.

"For a second there, I thought you were on Adria's side," she says, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"I'm always on your side, babe," Daniel says.

"Did you love her?" Vala asks her voice shaking a lot more than she meant it to.

Daniel's eyes laugh, even though his mouth doesn't quite manage it, "Vala, she's my step-daughter. Well, almost. Anyway, whatever love I had for her was related to that."

"That's not what she thought," Vala says. She meant it to be question, but it comes off as more of an accusation.

He takes her hand in his, and says, "Vala, I swear I never did anything inappropriate with her. Anything I allowed her to think was just to make sure that I got home to you, and my kids."

"You were gone a long time," Vala says with tears coming to her eyes. She wonders if she is getting soft or if it's just the pregnancy hormones.

He scoots over on the bed inviting her up with him. She sits next to him, and he wraps a hand around her. "I should have got back sooner. I never should have tried to save the world on my way back, you are too important for that."

He's dead serous, and that makes her feel ridiculously selfish. "I don't always like sharing you with the universe," she says, turning toward him.

Suddenly, her belly is between them, and they are pushed together. When she's wearing baggy clothes, like she always has as of late, you can't tell that she's going to have a baby. However, it's different when you feel it.

His eyes bulge, and he glances down at her stomach before he can stop himself.

She blushes, and for a moment considers telling him the truth. No, she can get by with a couple more months before she has to leave if the lie is good enough. "It's that stomach thing. They got it figured out so I don't have to be nauseous anymore, but the pills have a side effect of weight gain. Sorry that your wife blew up like a marshmallow while you were away."

"You are a long way from marshmallow. You still lot hot. Besides, I don't like you for you looks. You could look like the aliens of P3X-949, and I'd still love you."

"Isn't that the planet with the red things with tentacles and eyes everywhere?" Vala asks.

"Yep," he says proudly.

"How would we have sex?" she asks.

"Oh, we're very creative, we'd find a way," he giggles.

"I'm glad you don't look like the aliens of P3X-949," she says. He is starting to form a wounded look on his face just when she quickly adds, "But if you did, I would love you anyway."

"Good to know," he grins.

**One Month Later**

Tamara goes to answer the door, but when she looks through the keyhole she sees a man that she doesn't know. She could talk through the door to figure it out, but she'd rather call in the big troops. Unfortunately, the really big troops, namely Teal'c, is at work right now. "Shel!"

Shelby peaks through the door, and sees someone who she doesn't recognize either. It probably isn't a huge deal. It's probably a salesman or something. You just can't be too careful when you work for the SGC though, it could be NID for all that she knows.

"Identify yourself," she says.

"I'm sorry, I must have the wrong place. I was looking for my daughter… Shelby Dunn."

Shelby freezes, and stares at the door.

"Did he hurt you like my dad did?" Tam asks terrified.

"No, he never did anything like that; well, at least not as far as I know, I don't even remember him. The only thing I know he ever did was leave," Shelby says staring at the door.

"He's not leaving right now," Tammy says, opening the door without Shelby really giving her any permission.

"You're Shelby?" the man says looking at the teenager before him. He knows that he's wrong, but he can't make sense of why the door would have opened otherwise.

"I'm Shelby, she's my sister," Shelby says, staring at the man in front of her.

"Half-sister," Tammy explains.

"I heard that you'd moved away from your mother," the man says.

"Yeah, when I was fourteen. Things weren't exactly great there," Shelby says.

"I know, that's why I left," Mr. Dunn says.

"Right, well if it was so bad that you left it, why didn't you think to take your baby with you?" Shelby asks with furry in her voice.

Mr. Dunn stares at his daughter, "Your mother was cheating on me with a series of losers. It didn't seem like it had anything to do with you, but I should have known that when you got old enough you would be just as annoyed with your mother cheating as I was. I just didn't think about it when I was a little kid."

"You think I left my mom because she was a slut?" Shelby says in shock.

Tammy invites the man in with a tint of his head. Mr. Dunn shut the door behind him. He looks at his daughter with concern.

"Some of those losers? They put me in the hospital with their abuse. Her dad… was a rapist," she says gesturing toward Tammy.

Tammy fidgets, and seriously debates leaving the room, but instead she comes over, and stands behind her sister. She figures her sister could use some emotional support right now.

"I didn't know," her father says slowly.

"Well you could have known! You could have come and checked on me some time in the last two and a half decades!"

"I thought you were all right!" her father responds, raising her level for level.

"Well I wasn't! I wasn't all right!" Shelby says with her voice going softer and softer.

He leans forward, and tries to hug her.

She pulls away.

"No! I raised myself. I raised two younger siblings. Well, I'm up to five kids now, but three of them I can't blame on you. You should have been there, though! You should have been there for me."

"I'm sorry," the man says.

"Mommy?" Luke says, coming down the hallway rubbing his eyes.

"It's ok, honey," Shelby says, hurrying over to pick up her son. She has worked so hard to make sure that her former life doesn't affect her children's. She would hate to throw that all away now.

"This is your kid then? I'm a grandpa?" the man asks looking at her.

"She has twins, and a step son who is a grown-up. She and her husband have also been taking care of my sister and I for many years," Tammy offers.

"I would love to get to know my family," he says, looking at Shelby.

"You don't deserve that," she says, bouncing the child on her hip. She then catches his eye, "But they do, and I don't really have family to spare."


	120. Part 11 Chapter 12

"Tammy, could you hold Luke for a second?" Shelby asks, handing the child to Tammy.

Mr. Dunn doesn't object to the hand-off, even though he is quietly insulted that she didn't choose to hand the child to him instead.

She returns a few minutes later with the young Lexi in her hands. Her father is taken aback. "You adopted the twins?" he asks.

Shelby's voice is ice. Up until now, she was just uncertain whether or not she liked her father. She was tentative, and scared. Now she knows for a fact that this man is a horrible human being. "No, she's my kid."

"So your boyfriend?" her father prompts.

"My husband… yeah, he's black."

"Oh," her father says blinking. "Where is he?" he looks around the house, as if expecting him to come out of the woodwork.

"He's at work."

"What does he do?"

"He works for the Air Force."

"A soldier?"

"A soldier who used to be in charge of an army far bigger than you can even imagine or hear of."

"Used to be?" her father asks.

"That was before he came to America. He still has a really important job, he's just not in charge of as many people," Shelby explains.

"You married a foreigner?" her father asks in shock.

"Get out of my house," Shelby says in a dangerously even voice.

"I don't understand what I did wrong," her father protests.

"You will not come in here and insult my family. I told you to get out of my house!" she says, marching him toward the door and opening it.

Teal'c is standing on the other side of the door with a key stretched out to where the lock was minutes before.

Mr. Dunn's eyes bulge at the sight. Somehow, he hadn't imagined someone quite so large as his son-in-law.

"Who is this?" he asks.

"It's my father, by biological father," Shelby says.

Teal'c gets very close to him, "Did he harm you or your mother in any way?"

"No," Shelby says, "Well, at least I don't think so. I don't actually remember him."

"I didn't! I swear!" the man says, looking at the figure that is looming over him with terror.

"Why was he being removed from out home?" Teal'c asks.

Shelby is too ashamed to answer. She still hasn't been able to explain racism to Teal'c in a way that will get him to stop attempting to scare the racism out of strangers. She doubts that she'll ever be able to explain the fear of immigrants to him.

Teal'c reaches over, and picks up the man by the back of his neck, and starts to lift him of the ground.

"Hold it!" Tammy exclaims, "Dude, all he did was seem a little surprised you were black, and not from around here."

"You informed him of my extraterrestrial origins?" Teal'c asks, surprised that they would give away such information to someone they barely knew. Shelby never even told her mother.

Tammy smacks herself in the head knowing that Teal'c just informed the man. Her big sister however, is much better at covering, 'alien', man, you are meant to say that you are a legal alien, not extraterrestrial, that means something totally different."

Teal'c catches on immediately, and covers smoothly, "Of course, my grasp of the English language is still not without flaw."

The man looks from one to the other of them, not quite believing what had turned into a rather convincing display.

"I do not believe this is ample reason to evict a family member from our home," Teal'c says to his wife.

"Teal'c, he _left me_, and then he insulted my husband and my babies. That is more than enough reason to give him the boot."

"Is there not a saying on your planet that erring twice is not the same as making a correction?"

"Two wrongs don't make a right? Yeah. You're saying that me making him leave doesn't make up for the fact that he left when I was a kid. What if he hurts the kids?" Shelby says.

Teal'c's eyes flash almost as much as if he had a Goa'uld inside of him. "I will not allow him to harm the children."

"I'm not talking about physical harm here. I mean, the man has a history of taking off when the going gets tough. What if the kids get attached to him, and then he's just gone?"

"Look, I know that I am probably not part of the kids that you are worried about here. He's no kin of mine, but I'd rather have a grandpa-type figure in my life for a little while, and then have him disappear, than have no grandpa-type figure in my life at all," Tammy says.

Shelby reaches over, and kisses her forehead, "You are always and forever one of my kids, even though you are getting so grown up. Come in," she adds, holding the door open for her dad.

Mr. Dunn gives Teal'c a look which clearly indicates that he believes that he needs permission from him as well. Teal'c gives the man a slow nod before he dares to walk across the threshold.

-0-

Vala doesn't even turn on the light anymore. Her midnight cravings have become so common that her body knows the way to the fridge. There is no danger of her ever-expanding ankles tripping over anything.

She picks a few things out of the fridge which she knows would horrify her husband, and then she sits down to eat them in the dark.

Then suddenly, she isn't in the dark anymore. Olivia is standing there blinking at her.

"You're eating pickles and ice cream," Olivia informs her.

"I know, it's kind of weird. It's that stomach bacteria thing I have makes me crave some pretty strange things."

"Crave?" Olivia says with her eyebrows raised.

Vala nods her head, having no idea what that word causes to spring into most Earthlings heads.

"So you are craving pickles and ice cream?" the girl continues, raising her eyebrows again.

Olivia looks down at the woman's stomach, and can't believe she's been stupid enough to believe the cover story. She'd not even been adopted yet when she'd blown the roof off the whole bit about the Stargate. Yet for months, she'd been believing whatever crap her not-a-stepmom had chosen to feed her about the obviously impending addition to the family.

She sits down in the chair across from Vala. "You could have told me, you know."

"What? That I was eating pickles and ice cream? I didn't know you liked them. I'll wake you up next time," Vala says, pushing the dish toward her.

"I don't like pickles and ice cream!" the girl practically screams, "There is absolutely no way I could ever like pickles and ice cream! Not even close! I'm not going to have pickles and ice cream until I'm, like, 30!"

Vala stares at her for a long quite second. "Ok, clearly in this conversation pickles and ice cream are some sort of a metaphor. I have no idea what they are a metaphor for."

"You're pregnant," Olivia says plainly.

"No, it's this bacterial infection I got, because I'm an alien…" Vala starts to protest.

"Vala, I'm thirteen, not three. There is no weird alien disease that mimics every single aspect of human pregnancy. I should have caught on a long time before now, but I was too stupid. I just don't understand why you and Dad don't just tell us. I mean, we're going to know in a couple of months when the baby comes. Why would you make up this whole like to keep it a secret for just a little bit longer?"

"Your father doesn't know," Vala practically whispers.

Then Olivia's heart shatters, and her lip quivers. She starts to think about how different a not-a-stepmother was from a stepmother. Maybe, if they had really been married, she'd still get to see Vala when it was all over. Maybe, if they were really married, she never would have cheated on him. Maybe, this sort of thing was why they never got married for real.

"It's not Dad's," Olivia says.

Vala feels the accusation piercing her heart like an arrow through silk, "Of course it's your father's! I've never cheated on him. I would never cheat on him! I certainly don't have to with all the things that we get up to in the bedroom…"

"Just stop right there, this completely falls under the category of things I so don't need to know about you guys. So, if it's Dad's kid, how come you haven't told him yet? I mean you've got to be pretty far along. Like, more than halfway."

"I'm more than five months pregnant," Vala agrees, rubbing her stomach. She looks away. She doesn't feel right saying anything bad about this little girl's father to her, but she doesn't know how else to get out of this conversation. "Olivia, your father and I decided before we got married that we weren't going to have any kids together. We were happy with the ones we had."

This earns a grin from the girl.

"This little baby was an accident. Apparently, you have to use back-up birth control for several months when you start taking the pill," Vala explains.

"Ew, gross, I am way too young to know the details of exactly how my little sibling was an accident!" Olivia explains in horror.

Vala considers the girl before her seriously for a second before saying, "No, you are thirteen. That is way too young to be having sex, it's just about the right age to be getting information on how to do it safely when you are all grown up and with a guy as great as your father."

Olivia looks at the woman before her seriously, "Dad would so not approve of you giving me the sex talk."

"Yeah, well, he's also not going to give it to you. So why don't you grab a spoon, and agree never to tell him?" Vala asks.

Olivia giggles and obediently grabs a spoon from the drawer, but she isn't quite so willing to be distracted from the conversation at hand. "Ok, so you screwed up the birth control, and don't want to tell dad that you're having an oopsie baby. I get that, I really do. But you have to know that waiting isn't going to make it any better. I mean, it's really obvious at this point. The only reason I didn't figure it out a long time ago is the really elaborate lies that you are telling. It's only a matter of time before he sees through the lies. Waiting to tell him is so not going to make things better."

Olivia looks over her rocky road to see a tear falling silently from Vala's face.

"What?" Olivia asks.

"I don't want to go," Vala says sounding more vulnerable, more honest than she has since she was a small child.

"Go? You're leaving?" Olivia says confused.

Vala puts a hand on her stomach.

"You're never going to tell him?!" Olivia stands up horrified, "You plan on leaving with his kid, and never even letting him know?!" she practically shouts.

"Actually, I plan on staying until he finds out. I haven't told him, because I don't want to go. I know it's stupid. I know at some point he's going to figure out that I'm having a kid. I just… don't want to leave you guys quite yet. Is it stupid to fight for a couple of extra months? Probably, but I think you guys are worth it. So worth it."

"What are you talking about, Dad would never let you leave if he knew you were having a baby! I mean, honestly, I don't think he would ever let you leave no matter what." Then Olivia looks up into the eyes of her almost-step-mother, and sees that to the depth of her soul Vala believes that she has to make a choice between her child and the man she loves. Olivia thought she knew her father better than that. She wants to cry as badly as Vala does, but she doesn't, "Where are you going?"

"I haven't decided yet. Through the gate, of course. There are a lot of great planets out there in the universe. Of course, the things that made me consider something a great planet before I had a baby are not the things that make me consider it a great planet now. I don't know. Someplace quiet, maybe. People are supposed to want quieter when they have a baby, aren't they?"

"Vala, you can't leave Earth. If you stayed here, then we could still see you. I could, like, babysit for you, or we could do each other's nails or something. You are the only person who has ever given me a French manicure which I didn't feel the need to remove the instant the polish dried."

"Honey, I don't think your dad is exactly going to want me to be hanging around with you."

"Well, that's stupid. If the only reason you guys are breaking up is because he doesn't want a baby, and he doesn't actually have to see the baby, then there is no reason…"

Vala takes a deep breath, "And here we are back in the sex ed part of the talk. Well, maybe it's the love ed part of the talk. How come they don't teach love ed? Love is way more complicated than sex. Sweetie, break-ups are usually messy. They're usually harder the more you love someone. Is it possible for people to break up with someone, and stay friends? Sure, when they try really hard, and were drifting apart for a long time already. Me and your Dad? Honey, we're never going to be friends again. We've got this love, this passion for each other. And that's good, right? It makes us argue, and it makes us tease, and it makes us look longingly in each other's eyes, and it makes all that bedroom stuff you don't want to know about really great. But when you're done being with someone, and the passion is still there, things are going to be fights, and not the funny ones your father and I have. We're not going to scream at each other and then kiss. It' pretty much going to be all screaming."

Olivia bites her lip, "You're saying Dad is going to be so mad at you for accidently getting pregnant that he's never going to want to see you again."

"No, honey, I'm saying that your father is going to be just as disappointed that his relationship didn't work out that I am. I'm saying that both of us are going to have our hearts broken into a million tiny pieces, and neither one of us is going to be able to look at the other one without screaming or crying for a long while, maybe even forever."

"I don't think I understand," Olivia whispers.

"Well, of course you don't! You're not going to understand love for a long time. That's why all this dating years and years before you're old enough to get married is mostly play-acting. You're not ready for love yet, babe. The kind of love that's a promise, that's a job, that's an entire lifestyle. That kind of love can be the most amazing thing in the world. I would hate to feel like what happened to your father and I messed that up."

The two take a few spoonfuls of ice cream in silence before Vala says, "Now, are you going to let me give you the sex talk? Goodness only knows if I'll have the chance later or not."

Tears brim on the edge of Olivia's eyes as she nods her head.


	121. Part 11 Chapter 13

**Spoilers for "Family Ties"**

How do you make up for leaving your only child? Ice cream? Well, that one probably doesn't work when she's old enough to buy her own ice cream. Buy her a car? She already has one that's a whole lot nicer that he could ever buy her. Both she and her husband have government jobs, and even with five children they seem to be doing more than just making ends meet. He left his only kid, and never paid a dime of child support, and he couldn't seem to quite make ends meet.

The best thing he could think of to do was to spend time with her. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the only thing that she didn't want him to do. She didn't trust him any farther than she could throw him, and frankly, it showed.

The kids were easier to win over. Rya'c wasn't around much. He spent most of his time with the women he would be marrying next month and her three children. When he was around, he was as silent as his father, so whatever disapproval there was, at least Mr. Dunn didn't have to hear about it.

Tammy was accepting of him. It turns out her real father, as well as the few other father figures she'd had in her life whenever her mother and her real father had been separated, had been creeps of the first order. As long as he didn't abuse her, it seemed as if he was a winner in her eyes. Of course, she did have the one good example of fatherhood, or at the very least that was how she seemed to view his daughter's husband, the giant that they called Teal'c.

Her little sister Becky was a bit more leery. The girl was closer to both of her guardians than her sister was. She sensed that neither of them was willing to let down their guard around them, and therefore, she was not willing to either. There was no way that he was going to make any headway winning the girl over until he was able to win over one or both of the adults in her life.

The twins, of course, were easy. So long as he was able to raid a quarter vending machine for some gaudy stickers or a bouncy ball before he came over, they were putty in his hands.

One night, Shelby went upstairs to put the twins to bed, and was somewhat surprised to see her father still downstairs when she returned. She had figured that with the attitude that she was giving him, he knew he was more or less only allowed around for the sake of the children.

He smiles at her for a long minute before he says, "You had that same facial expression when you were a baby, too."

"Which one?" she asks.

"The one that you wear whenever you are in the same room as me. It meant something different when you were a kid, though. Well, at least I hope it did! When you were a kid you used to make that face every time that someone was going to tickle you, or play hide-in-seek, or laugh at some joke you didn't have the vocabulary to understand. I always used to call it your disapproving look."

"What makes you think that the meaning's changed?" Shelby says, feeling free to insult the man a little bit when none of her family is close enough to scold her.

"Oh, now it means 'please don't hurt me, I can't take any more'. Honestly, Shel, I don't know how you survived it all. Of course, I don't have the slightest clue what 'it all' really is. I only have little hints and whispers that you've let out. I can tell by your face that it was bad, though. That it was really bad. I wish that I could have saved you from it. I would do anything in order to be able to go back and time, and make it so that all of it never happened."

"You could have saved me," Shelby says, trying so hard to keep the mask firmly on her face. She is afraid that the littlest crack will make the whole thing break, like a small hole in a large dam.

"I know I could have. I wish I had. But I swear to you, I didn't know. There was nothing that could have made me suspect, and I can't do anything to save you now."

"Now? I don't need saving now. I saved myself, and then Teal'c saved me, and then I saved my sisters. I don't need anyone now," she quickly amends her words which sound childish and untrue to her, "I don't need you." That, at least, is true.

"I know, that was my point. You don't need me now, and I can't go back to all the times that you did need me," he says softly.

"You were my father. You should have showed up and checked on me. Yeah, she was my mom. She cheated on you. I can get why you wouldn't want to be with her anymore. Hell, I didn't want to be with her anymore. That doesn't exactly explain why you didn't want to be with me. I wasn't even two years old, what unpardonable sin did I commit?"

"Oh, sweetie, you didn't do anything wrong," he says holding out his hands to her.

"No, I must have. I must have done something awful, otherwise you never would have left me with the monsters."

He wants to defend himself once more. He feels the desperate urge to remind her that he never knew about the monsters, that he would never leave her to that on purpose. He has noticed that this conversation does not make sense. That it's gone beyond logic, and he knows what he has to say. It is his first unselfish act toward her. He tells her what she needs to hear, even though it isn't what he wants to say, "Is there anything that your kids could do? Anything that would make you leave them and never look back?"

"NO!" she shouts out all of her anger at him into a single piercing word.

"Then it wasn't you, was it? It was me that was wrong. I am the one who screwed up."

Then Shelby hugs him and sobs, because that she can understand. It is easy for her to forgive a sin that is confessed. Christians are used to loving the broken sinner.

**One Week Later**

"Vala, do you know this man?" General Landry asks her as the team looks at the man on the video screen. Daniel really hopes this isn't another one of her age-inappropriate romances. He's been meaning to ask her for a complete list of sexual encounters before he entered her life. He's just a little bit afraid that they wouldn't make enough paper to hold it, or that their relationship would endure the question. It's best to close his eyes, and just be grateful that he really and truly isn't worried that there have been any sexual encounters with anyone else than the two of them got together.

"A little bit, he's my dad," Vala says, and Daniel's breath catches for a whole second. He never asked about her parents. He knew that she had a stepmother that she didn't get along with, only because she'd named her daughter after her. Other than that, he knew pretty much nothing about any member of her family. Maybe there was a whole extended family that his children were missing out on getting to know. There was certainly this one person.

He puts his hand in hers, and she squeezes it, desperate for comfort.

-0-

"Vala, we have to at least ask him to dinner."

"Really, and why would that be?"

"He's your father," Daniel says with a role of his eyes.

"He donated some sperm, Daniel. That doesn't make him my father."

"Vala, sweetie, I'm here for you. I know you have a lot of Daddy issues. Maybe he is the biggest ass in the universe like you seem to think he is. You still have a dad. I lost mine a long time ago."

She looks at him and sighs, "Ok, but I'm not letting those little kids of yours fall in love with him, you hear me?"

-0-

"So this is your husband?" Jacek asks, extending his hand to Daniel.

Daniel takes it, but gives the man a look which plainly says he doesn't believe everything about the man.

"We're not exactly married," Vala says.

"You couldn't make an honest women of her, eh?" Jacek teases Daniel.

Daniel smiles at Vala, "Oh, I already did that. It wasn't hard to make her honest, she just needed someone she could count on. It's true we're not married, but we are in it forever. She's a great mother."

"Mother?" Jacek says in shock. Then he glances at her stomach with a tiny smile. Her stomach is small enough that by looking at her, you would never know for sure if she was pregnant or not, but he figures the word of hint is a revelation.

"Stepmother, to be technical," Vala says.

"Well, not technically if you're not married," Jacek points out.

"That has nothing to do with Vala," Daniel quickly says, glancing at the women beside him quickly to see if her father's words had hurt her in any way. She looks like they haven't, but Daniel knows with Vala, that would be true whether they had caused her harm or not.

"What, you've got a secret wife locked up in the attic or something?" Jacek teases.

Daniel face shows a second of shock, the man having come closer to the truth much faster than Daniel would have expected from him.

"He's married? Vala, I thought I raised you better than that."

"You didn't raise me. Mother did. And his wife died; well, both of them did, actually."

Jacek looks at Daniel with sympathy, but doesn't stop his questions, "Does this country have some sort of law against widowers marrying?"

"No," Daniel says taking his wife's hand, "We're married. I just didn't do the paperwork, because I thought it was bad luck." The reason feels silly and foolish when it's said out loud in front of a stranger who is his father-in-law; well, almost.

"How many times have you been married?" Vala asks her father pointedly.

"So, not only does Vala have a family, but she's doing pretty great professionally," Daniel says. Vala turns to him, and grins. He isn't a professional peacekeeper for nothing.

"That's no surprise. She was only eight years old when I took her to the waterfalls of Godesh," Jacek says.

"Well, I'm not exactly a pickpocket anymore," Vala says quickly.

"I'm sure not. You're allied with the great warriors of Earth. There has to be pretty good loot associated with that," Jacek says, with something that is either genuine pride, or his usual sucking up; Vala can't tell.

"We don't exactly pay her in loot. She has a salary. She is fighting against the Goa'uld, and now that they are gone, she is fighting against every other nasty thing in the universe. She's a force for good. She's making the world a much better place to be," Daniel says.

Holy crap, her husband is as great at BS as her father. None of that is true. She blushes, and scolds, "Daniel."

"It's true," he says, turning his blue eyes too her, and suddenly she can't doubt that Daniel believes the lie. Daniel doesn't lie on purpose.

"Well, I'm proud of you," Jacek says.

"No," Vala says.

"Honey," Daniel warns softly.

"No, this is what he does, Daniel! You might not be able to see through it, but that's just because you haven't lived with you all these years. I used to believe him too, but I have been burned so many times that there is no way that I am going to believe it anymore! He was never there for Mother, even though you always expected us to be there for you, whenever you needed a place to hide, or capital to set you up with one of your latest scams. My life has been a constant struggle against the personal issues that you seeded. And now that I am at Stargate Command and finally happy with who I am, you think you can come along and jeopardize everything that I have worked so hard to achieve. Under no circumstances will I allow you to screw that up for me, and I certainly am not going to allow you to hurt these children that I love," Vala says, standing up from the table.

Daniel stands up after her, in a show of solidarity.

"Aren't we even going to eat this nice pie that you bought me?" her father asks, with an eyebrow raised.

"I've said everything I needed to say," she says.

"Well if that is all that you needed to say, then you could have just sent a letter," Jacek points out.

"I asked her to come see you; I think that family is important."

"Before you go, I want to give you this," he says holding up a shiny necklace for her to see, "I got it from a trader on Meronet. You know, that little world with the two suns that I used to take you too."

Vala looks softer than she has since she's seen her father. Softer than Daniel's ever seen her unless she has one of his kids in her arms, "I remember Meronet."

"Do you still have that treasure box? The one where I used to put your gifts that I got you when you were a little girl?"

Vala looks at her father after shuffling around a bit, and then says, "No, I got rid of that a long time ago."

Daniel can tell that she is lying, and he wonders if her father knows her that well. He should, even though he was very much in and out of her life he was there for most of her life. Daniel can tell, and he's only knowns her for a couple of years.

"Ah, well, I understand," Jacek says with a sigh, "Well, I appreciate you sitting down with me, and buying me this meal. Even though it is too late, I want you to know… that I am sorry."

**One Week Later**

"Are you all right?" Daniel asks Vala.

"Great, yeah, wonderful. Everything went according to plan. Jacek scammed us, we scammed him better."

Daniel sighs, "Ice cream?" he offers, holding up a gallon and two spoons.

Vala grins, "You know me well."

"Right, well, I was going to go with wine. Wine would be the proper reaction to what your father did to you, but ever since you got a bacteria infection, wine has not been your friend, so…"

"Ice cream is great," she says, grinning a little uncomfortably.

She knows that she is not going to be able to hide her pregnancy much longer, and she also knows that leaving a guy as good as Daniel is going to break his heart.


	122. Part 11 Chapter 14

"Is your homework done, Livy Lou?" Daniel asks cheerfully.

"Whatever," Olivia says getting up, and walking out of the room with a roll of her eyes.

"Hey, get back here young lady!" he calls after her, but gets no response. "What has gotten into that girl lately? She used to be sweet didn't she?"

Vala shrugs, even though she knows exactly what got into the girl. Olivia started giving her dad that attitude the exact moment that she found out her step mother was pregnant, and was going to have to leave as soon as Daniel found out. "I'll go talk to her," Vala says.

"Right, and grounding. Is grounding the right thing? You know, I don't think I've ever actually punished Olivia before. Once and a while I just give her the stern look, and that's it. She came to us mostly finished. Well, at least apparently until she hit her teenager years."

"I'll take care of everything," Vala says giving her husband a quick kiss before following the girl. But she knows full well that she is not going to punish the girl. She doesn't have the heart to punish someone who is only defending her.

**Two Weeks Later**

There were a lot of fights leading up to the marriage. Cassie has a feeling that if the two of them had been married only a few years before there would have been a whole bunch of more arguments. Every time that Teal'c talked mentioned some tradition, Bra'tac would inform him that it had fallen out of favor with the free Jaffa.

In the end, Casie and Rya'c's weeding turned out more like a traditional Earth wedding than a traditional Jaffa wedding.

"Which is ironic," Cassie told her new husband, "Because neither of us are from Earth."

"Oh, we're both from Earth, now," Rya'c says looking at the three Earthling children which have just become his step-children. "You grew up here, and I choose this place."

Cassie sighs contented, "Well, I may never consider myself an Earthling, but I am quite content to spend the rest of my life here. After all, this is where my family lives."

-0-

Daniel and Vala are lying in bed, face to face. There arms are wrapped around each other, pulling each other as close together as they can physically get. Vala is already fast asleep, and Daniel is just about to join her in dream land when he feels a kick.

It's not from Vala, it's from something inside of Vala.

My God! How could I be so dense! He thought.

He pulls away from her in shock, and she wakes up at the motion.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks into the darkness.

She wasn't awake for the discovery, and is still fully awake, "What didn't I tell you?" she says stupidly.

"You did worse than not tell me! You lied to me! Stomach virus? Alien freaking stomach virus that covered every freaking symptom of pregnancy. I mean, I knew you were a con artist. I knew that going in, I just didn't think that you would try and con me!" he shouts.

"I'm sorry," Vala says standing up quietly beside the bed.

"You're sorry? That's all you have to say? How pregnant are you?" Vala starts to cry, and that take the wind out of his sails. "I'm sorry, come here."

"No," she sobs, "Don't be nice to me, it's hard enough without you being nice to me!" she says with venom.

"Do you want me to be mean to you? How is that going to make it better?" Daniel asks in confusion.

"It's going to be a lot easier to leave if you aren't nice to me," she says turning her back to him, and going over to pack. She starts with _the _drawer, the first one that he'd ever given her.

"Leave?" he asks in shock and horror.

She turns him in in surprise, and anger, "Don't you do that, now! Don't you act like it's my idea to leave."

"Why are you leaving me?" he asks with breath coming at a panicked quacking speed.

"I'm pregnant," she says confused as to how that doesn't explain everything.

"You're taking my kid away from me?" he asks.

"You told me when we got married that there would be no kids. I swear, Daniel, I didn't get pregnant on purpose. I wasn't trying to trick you or trap you. I hated having to choose between the two of you. Trust me it was close, it was the hardest discussion that I ever had. But I choose my kid. I'm sorry, I couldn't kill it."

"Kill it? Vala, I never asked you to have an abortion," Daniel says befuddled.

"You said no kids!" she says in frustration. She feels like the two of them are having completely different conversations.

"I said no kids in theory, but that doesn't mean that when we had a kid, already existing, right here," he says crossing the room to put his hand on her stomach, "that I wouldn't love it. That I would want you to get rid of it. You said that you choose between me, and the kid. You didn't give me a choice. Even if I really, really, didn't want a kid, I would still choose you with a kid over no you and no kid. The idea is growing on me though. I think that it's right for the two of us to have a kid. I was selfish when I said no. I knew you wanted a kid and I let you settle. Maybe this is nature's, or God's, or whatever higher alien being is in charge of these things', way of fixing my stupidity."

Vala is too shocked to take in the whole discussion, "Not leaving?" she asks holding a handful of socks that she'd been attempting to pack.

"God I hope not," he says taking her into his arms.

She starts to sob, and he rubs her back, "Vala, my love we are forever. You could do a hell of a lot worse than give birth to my baby, and I still wouldn't leave you."

"It is your baby," Vala quickly says.

"Well of course it is, there was not question was there?" Daniel asks with no panic in his eyes as he says it. The only way he is going to question that the baby is his, is if she tells him that it isn't.

"Olivia thought there was," Vala says without even thinking about what else she is revealing with her words.

"Olivia knows you're pregnant?" Daniel asks with eyebrows raised, but without withdrawing the tiniest bit of his support from Vala's sobbing.

Vala nods into his shoulder.

"I assume she also thinks that I am making you leave."

Vala pulls away, and looks at his face as she says, "I swear I thought you were making me leave. You can't really call it lying if you thought you were telling the truth."

He smiles at her, "No, I don't suppose you can. This explains the attitude lately."

"I told her that she had to knock it off. I really did. I didn't punish her though. I mean….she had a right to be mad."

"I should say she did! If she thought that I was kicking your pregnant ass to the curb I would be disappointed with her if she wasn't mad! Hopefully this means that she'll be putting away her teenage attitude, at least for a while."

"I really am sorry about getting pregnant," Vala says.

"I'm not! Happy accidents! Now how pregnant are you?" Daniel asks looking at her bulging stomach, and wondering once more how he could have possibly not known.

"Six months," she confesses.

"I've missed it. I've missed most of the pregnancy."

Guilt overwhelms her. If only she hadn't been so stupid, if only she hadn't believe for one second that Daniel could be so cruel, he could have experienced the whole pregnancy with his child. Not only that, but she could have had support.

"I'm sorry," she says.

He puts his hand on her cheek, and turns her toward him. He probably meant the motion to show how much he loved her, but in reality, she just gets a little bit better view of his pain, "No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you ever for a second believed that I wouldn't love you no matter what. That must have been horrible."

Vala sits down on the edge of the bed.

Daniel follows her motion, "When Janet was pregnant, both times, she was seriously ill. I was so worried the whole time, about her, about the baby, about whether or not putting her through this was the right thing to do. This would have been…different. At least I hope so, you haven't been really sick have you?" he asks suddenly worried that if he didn't even know that she was pregnant he might not know anything else about his wife either.

"No, I was barely sick at all," Vala assures him.

He nods his head, and wraps an arm around her, and she allows herself to snuggle into her side letting all the tension of months of secret keeping fall from her.

"Do you have the ultrasound picture laying around? I'd love to see my baby," Daniel asks.

"The what?" Vala asks still nestled in his side.

"You know, the picture the doctor takes with the machine."

"Oh, I told you that I haven't been sick. I didn't go to the doctor."

He pulls away her so that he can see her face, "You're messing with me right? This is another one of you fool Daniel moments right?"

"No, I really honestly haven't been sick dear," she says.

"But you've been to the doctor right? I mean, no way are you six months pregnant, and never having been to the doctor."

"You go to the doctor when you are sick," Vala says confused.

"No, honey, you go to the doctor when you're having a baby too. It's called pre-natal care."

"Um…that's stupid."

Daniel shakes his head, "Its fine, we'll just go to the doctor tomorrow."

"Daniel darling, I have had a baby before. I didn't go to the doctor with Adria."

"Well, we all saw how well that turned out," he says. When her face crumbles he feels like an ass once again, "I'm so sorry that was uncalled for."

"Right, I'm sure that a few glamor shots of the unborn would have forced my child not to turn all evil. I might have a lot of faith in fashion, but even I don't believe it is that powerful."

"They do other things there, beside take a picture. They check for diseases, and stuff."

"They can cure sicknesses before the child is even born?" Vala says impressed.

"Well, sometimes."

"What good would it be to know about all the diseases that they couldn't cure?"

"I don't know, this is probably a good question to ask the doctor. Or maybe I could look it up in one of the pregnancy books."

Vala stares at him in shock.

"What?" he asks in his 'please have mercy' voice.

"They have entire books on pregnancy? Now _you_ have got to be messing with_ me_."

"Please do not tell me that you are six months pregnant, and have not read a single pregnancy book."

"Look, I'm not from around here. Not only did I not know what I was supposed to do, but I'm not sure that I even agree that these things need to be done. How could there possibly be so much to pregnancy that they write a whole book about it?"

Daniel sighs, "Ok, well tomorrow I will make a doctor's appointment, and right now I am going to go get you a pregnancy book from the den to read."

"Ugh, I was never good at school. Can't I read a book about how to make babies instead?"

"There is a chapter on that in the book," Daniel says.

"Oh goody, let's start with that one."

"Well, we don't need to do we, because we've already made the baby? Besides, I can assure you that you already know a whole lot more about that than the people who write pregnancy books," Vala grins at this compliment.

Daniel is still making his way to the door when he hears Vala's voice call him back plaintively. "Daniel, can't it all wait until tomorrow?"

He turns to her, and sees that there is still a lot of fear in her eyes, and says, "Ok."

"Let's re-enact the making of chapter," she winks at him.

"Yes, that sounds great, however….I need to go talk to Livy first," he says. He realized when he saw the lingering fear in his wife's eyes that there had been absolutely nothing done to quench the fear in his daughter's. He was not going to let her spend another second worrying.


	123. Part 11 Chapter 15

He knocks on her door. Olivia opens it eagerly, and then her face falls when she sees who it is. "I'm sleeping," she says, turning back to her room, and shutting the door behind her.

He opens the door again, and follows her in.

"Didn't you hear me say that I was sleeping?" she asks with a snarl in her voice.

"Yeah, I did, but I didn't believe it. We really need to talk."

"Whatever," Olivia says sitting on her bed.

"It's about Vala," he says.

Olivia glances up at her father with cold terror in her eyes, but she doesn't say a word. There is no way that she is going to betray the secret, and lose so much as a minute with her mother-figure.

"She's pregnant," he says.

Olivia looks down.

"Honey, I know that you've known about this for a while. I also know that Vala told you something that isn't true. Something that she believed was true, but which would never ever happen. Honey, Vala is going to keep living with us forever. She's a member of our family."

"So what? You convinced her to give the baby away?" Olivia asks, with hot tears running down her face.

"No! Of course not! We're keeping it. It's our baby, Livy-Lou. We love it."

"She said that you didn't want any babies," Olivia says, continuing to cry.

"Ok, so yes, I did tell her that I didn't want any more kids. That is not the same as telling someone that they have to move out if they accidently get pregnant."

"So your plan is to continue to live together, and she has a baby that you really don't want her to have? That so does not sound like a recipe for a happy marriage. You're still going to end up apart. You're going to be too sad to even look at each other, just like Vala said."

"Whoa, what did Vala say?" he asks with eyebrows shutting up.

Olivia looks down at her bed.

Daniel looks away, and swallows a lump in his throat, "Olivia, sometimes Vala forgets you're a kid."

"I'm thirteen."

"Like I said, a kid. When she was thirteen, she had already been abused, neglected, and taking care of herself for years."

"I took care of myself."

"Right, in a museum for a couple of days. That's plucky, Livy. Vala, however, had already fought of sexual assault, escaped from slavery, and maybe killed a man, I'm never sure if that part of the story is true. So, she was maybe just a bit more grown-up than you are."

Olivia stares at her father in horror, never having been given any details on Vala's past, particularly these, the most hidden ones that Vala only told Daniel late at night when he hugged her out of a nightmare.

"Sometimes, Livy, Vala forgets you are a kid, and that you probably don't need to know how much it would suck if we broke up. It would be bad. It would break our heart. That's all you need to know. Well, that and that it's not going to happen. I am happy about this kid. In case you didn't notice, I really like kids. That's why I have four of them. I wasn't planning on having any more kids, but that wasn't fair to Vala. She deserves to hold a tiny baby in her arms, and know that she made it. It was wrong of me to deny her that. You know what else? I really want to see what a little Vala Mal Doran looks like. It was wrong of me to deny myself that."

"You're really ok with the baby?"

"Ecstatic," he grins in a way she can't doubt.

"So you and Vala aren't going to get a divorce?" she asks wearily.

"I'm not going to lie to you. We obviously have some issues to work out. Particularly those that involve honesty, and trust, but we're going to be all right."

Olivia wants to stay the surly teenager, but she just can't let herself. So she flings her arms around her father's neck like a small child, and squeezes him tight.

**The Next Day**

"Thanks for taking us in last minute like this," Daniel smiles at the nurse who shows them to an exam room. It's the sort of smile that can make women melt in their socks. Vala would hate him for doing it, if only he had a clue what effect he had. As it was, he thought he was just being friendly, and he treated men the same way. Not that he didn't have enough men swooning over him, as well.

"No problem. Can you give us the name of the previous doctor, so that I can get the records?" the nurse asks.

Vala rolls her eyes, "I haven't been sick."

"No, I mean, your obstetrician," the nurse says.

"Well, I haven't been obstructed either," Vala says, thinking that this conversation got personal quick. The healers of her home world would have at least engaged in a little chit chat before assuming you had bathroom issues.

Both Daniel and the nurse seem to be working their faces extremely hard to keep from cracking up.

"Obstetrician means a doctor who deals with pregnancy, honey," Daniel says. Then to the nurse he says, "She hasn't been to the doctor about her pregnancy." The nurses eyebrows go up, looking at her very pregnant belly. "She's from another country, and didn't know you were supposed to," he explains.

"They don't have pre-natal care in Australia?" the nurse says dubiously.

"Ah, she's not from Australia, despite the accent. Her mom was, but she was actually raised in a couple of different places around the world. None of which had our lovely tradition of going to the doctor when you were pregnant."

"I see," the nurse says, in a way which clearly shows that she doesn't. "How come you didn't let her in on our quirky way of doing medicine in the civilized world?" she asks with a strange mix of sarcasm and superiority.

"Oh, Daniel didn't know I was pregnant until last night," Vala says in a way that she honestly believes is helpful. It takes everything that Daniel has got to avoid smacking himself in the head.

"You didn't let your husband know that you were having his baby until you were this far along?" the nurse says.

"Oh, Daniel and I aren't married," Vala asks.

"I see," the nurse says in a way which plainly shows that she thinks she does. The life the nurse now thinks they lead is something even a bit more sordid than the life Vala actually led before she met Daniel.

"We're committed, though, together," Daniel covers, quickly going red at the nurse's judgment, and wishing they'd gone to the base. Sure, they didn't deal with a lot of pregnancy at the base, but at least they understood their unique position there, and he wouldn't have had to deal with so much awkwardness.

He suddenly remembers the question that the nurse asked before, "I didn't know, because I've been traveling, for the Air Force." It wasn't a lie. It just wasn't the reason he didn't know. After all, Vala had been traveling with him. He couldn't believe that she'd been going through the gate all that time while pregnant. Then, suddenly, he understands Vala's reason for not wanting to go to the base. She think she's still going through the gate.

"I see," the women says again.

"You'd make a good drinking game," Vala points out, and Daniel just barely fights the urge to clasp his hand over her mouth. Not that it would do any good. He'd done that once in an attempt to keep her from revealing a detail of their sex life to his teammates. She'd gotten him to let go by licking his hand.

The nurse glares at her.

"Not like you would drink during pregnancy, though, right, honey?" Daniel says.

"Seriously, you take away my coffee this morning, and now you're telling me no alcohol?" Vala asks.

"Please, please, please tell me you are joking, right?" Daniel asks, turning to her with wide frantic eyes.

"Well, it's not like I've drank _a lot._ You know me, and I never drank _a lot._ I actually like to be in control of my actions, thank you very much," she says, letting Daniel know that this is a remnant still of her time with a Goa'uld in her. "But I didn't know I wasn't supposed to, so yeah, I've had a couple of drinks. I didn't hurt it, did I?" she asks, turning nervously to the nurse, and putting a hand over the belly.

"Well, no, probably not. New studies show that one or two drinks a week are probably not harmful to the baby," the nurse says.

"What?" Daniel says, turning away from the nurse, "Look, no more drinking ok?"

"She says its fine," Vala says.

"I don't care! We're not taking risks with our kid," he says.

"So this coffee is an evil thing, is it fact or fiction?" Vala asks, looking at the nurse.

"No more than a cup a day," the nurse nods.

"Ha!" Vala says, turning to Daniel.

"None, Vala, none," he mutters.

"I should probably get your medical history down and let the doctor handle the rest of your questions," the nurse says. The poor women has obviously been made uncomfortable by their bickering. Most people are the first couple of times that they encounter Daniel and Vala in action. It's only when they see how far from serious the pair of them are that they can relax.

-0-

"I thought we were going home," Vala says as they pull up in front of a jewelry store.

"We're making a stop on the way."

"You're buying me something pretty?" she asks with a wide mischievous grin on her face.

"It's the least I can do; after all, you are having my baby," he tells her.

"Well, if this is an Earth tradition, let me just say it should be more widely advertised on your media. If I get a piece of jewelry for having your babies, I think we should have a dozen."

"Let's just stick with one," he says, kissing her before getting out of the car.

Up until now she had figured he was teasing her, now she doesn't know quite what to do. "Daniel, you know that you seriously don't have to buy me anything right? I mean, this baby was an accident, and the fact that you are letting our relationship continue is honestly enough."

"That is so not enough, Vala, and the fact that you think it is… well, that just reminds me how many people have treated you oh so badly over the years. I am not about to be one of them."

"Daniel you aren't, you are a prince," she says, grabbing his arm in the parking lot.

"Then marry me," he says with his face inches from hers.

"What?" she asks, her stomach dropping out from under her in hope and fear that she is misunderstanding what he is trying to say. He couldn't mean it, could he? Not really?

"This whole cutsie not-a-husband thing, I'm over it, aren't you?"

Her brain kicks in, and she realizes why he is saying all of these things, and why she can't let him marry her right down. Damn. "Daniel, you can't marry me just because some nurse was a jerk to us because we're not married."

"Vala, it's not just going to be her. This not-a-wedding thing, that was before kids were in the picture. Now you're pregnant, and people are going to continue to be jerks to you as long as you are not married."

"That's their problem, Daniel, they are the ones that need to change, not us."

"Yeah, well that's probably true, but they aren't going to change. Then, before too long, there is going to be a kid in the picture too. I'm not going to let people treat my kid like crap just, because I am some stupid superstition that putting a ring on your finger is going to kill you. This isn't some fairy tale, Vala, and I'm not eight anymore."

"I still haven't heard a good enough reason for you to marry me," she says.

His lips quirk into a smile, "I love you."

"That's the one," she says, and he picks her up on impulse, and twirls her around. She giggles.

"So, we're getting married?" he asks.

"Yes," she agrees with a nod of her head, "But we're not doing some big ceremony. We already did that once, and we really were married before, mostly. We'll just get it done as quickly, and quietly as possible and go about our lives. I declare that we consider our not-a-wedding as our anniversary."

"Is that because it's almost here?" he asks.

"I am not about to wait a whole year for my present."

He takes her hand, and they walk toward the jewelry store together, "Are you sure that you are OK with a city hall wedding? If you are not, we can do something fancier."

"Please nothing fancy, in the past year we have had a wedding and so has your daughter. I am weddinged out for a while," she says.


	124. Part 11 Chapter 16

Vala admires the ring on her hand all the way home. When Daniel turns off the car he says, "Honey, would you mind taking that off?"

"I asked if you if it was too big and gaudy in the store, and you said no. It's not very nice to change your mind now!" she protests.

"I'm not changing my mind," he says locking eyes with her so that she knows he's talking about more than just the ring, "I just don't want to startle them too much. We just got married, and I don't want that ring to be the one to tell my kids. I want to do it right. We'll wait until the nanny leaves, and the older two get home from school. We'll invite Cass and her family over for dinner. We'll have a nice meal, and over dessert, we'll announce the baby and our marriage."

"It's not as if I want to keep it a secret. Well, at least not now that I know that the discovery of the secret doesn't meant that I have to find a new place to live."

"Ok then, pocket that thing," he says, and Vala obediently slips the ring into her pocket.

-0-

"So, Vala and I have an announcement," Daniel says standing up as his family finish off their ice cream. Vala had grabbed some pickles out of the fridge to go with it, but his look made her put them back. All the children and grandkids under ten are looking at him with rapt attention. Olivia has a huge grin on her face. Cassie and Rya'c almost look bored.

"You're telling us that she's pregnant right? Anyone with a brain cell could see through that alien virus thing. I'm just not sure why you hid it so long," Cassie says.

Daniel blinks at her not sure what to say.

"What?" Drew asks pulling on Olivia's shirt in confusion.

Vala bends down to the boy's level, knowing that Olivia is so not ready to answer a question this close to the birds and the bees from a little kid. "Pregnant means that that there is a baby growing inside of me. In a few months, it is going to be big enough to come out and live with us."

"I'm a baby," Drew says.

"Well of course you are!" she says pulling him onto her lap, "And you're going to go right on being our baby until you become offended by that word. You think a family can only have one baby at a time? Luke and Lexi are both babies at once weren't they? You're just going to be the bigger baby soon."

Drew nodded his head accepting this answer.

"We're having a new brother?" Will asks.

"Actually," Vala says meeting her husband's eyes, and asking permission, "You're having a new sister."

"I want a brother instead," Will says crossing his arms.

"Well, buddy, it doesn't exactly work that way. Besides, sisters are great, you like Olivia and Cass don't you?"

Will isn't exactly resigned to his fate, but the open rebellion has been quelled at the least.

Cassie stands up, and goes to put her dishes in the dishwasher in the kitchen. Daniel follows her, "Honey?" he asks.

"You told me, a matter of months ago, that you were not going to have any children with that woman."

"I really didn't intend to Cass, it just happened."

"It just happened? Haven't you ever heard of birth control? Maybe mom should have given you the same sex talk you were so pissed at her giving to me."

"That was uncalled for," he says. He looks into her eyes expecting to find anger, but he only finds fear. He has no idea what she might be afraid of, so he just holds out his hands, and lets her fall into them.

"I don't want to get pregnant," she sobs.

He's surprised by this, but comforts her, "Ok, well, just because it happened to Vala doesn't mean it will to you. We…weren't exactly using everything to manufacture's recommendations so maybe that comment wasn't quite as uncalled for as I said it was."

"It could still happen."

"Yeah it could, Cass, but would that be so terrible? Ok, I admit, you've got your hands full with the kids you have. Still, you are married to a great man. It's not like it would be the end of the world if you got pregnant."

"How could you say that?" she asks pulling away from him. At his confused look she takes pity on him, and explains herself, "If I had a kid, it would die."

"What?" Daniel asks in shock.

"That whole thing with Nirri. I got fixed, but my DNA didn't."

"Oh," Daniel says blinking.

"So ever since my sixteenth birthday I thought I would never be able to have kids. Then I ended up with my three little girls, and I thought I was so lucky. I don't know, this whole thing is just making me worry about how horrible it would be if I ever got pregnant."

He looks at the woman before him, and sees for a minute the little girl she was when he first met her, "You once told me that some people were worth loving, even if you ended up getting your heart broken over them."

"Right, but I'm not sure that justifies bringing a little kid in the world with an expiration date."

"Maybe not. I'm not telling you to be careless. I'm just saying that maybe you don't have to be afraid of having a kid either."

She smiles.

"I used to be afraid of marrying, Vala. I thought I was cursed or something. Thought that everyone I ever loved was going to die."

"Used to?" Cassie asks not having missed the past tense at the beginning of the speech.

He smiles, "We were going to tell everyone together, but I kind of wanted to tell you alone. You're the one whose reaction I'm most worried about."

"You and Vala are getting married?" she asks with a raised brow.

"We already did, this afternoon," he says flinching, hoping that doesn't make it worst.

"Ok," Cassie says with a shrug of her shoulders.

"Just ok? That's all you have to say about it?" he asks in shock.

"It's not like it's really a surprise. You guys have been living like you were married for a while. Long before that whole not-a-wedding thing a while back. I don't know why I would have a problem with you making it official. I guess I even prefer it. Do you know how hard it is to introduce her? I mean, she's more than 'dad's girlfriend' but there just isn't a word for it. Now it's easy, she's my step mom."

"Yeah, she is," Daniel says with a grin on his face.

"Why don't you get in there, and break this news to the rest of them? Go on," Cassie says nudging him with her elbow.

"You ok?" he asks.

Cassie nods her head.

He re-enters the living room to find Vala wiping ice cream off Keisha's while balancing Drew on her knee. Step-mother was right.

She mouths over the children's head, "she ok?"

Daniel nods his head and grins. "We have one more announcement," he says. He pauses when he sees Vala reaching into her pants pocket, and fishing for the ring. As she slips it on he says, "Vala and I got married today."

Rya'c reaches one giant hand over to pat Daniel on the back. One of the little girl's claps, and that starts general applause in the room. Olivia gets up, and runs out of the room without saying a word. Vala looks crushed, and Daniel gets up to follow his daughter.

"I've got this one," Vala says placing Drew on the floor before following the girl upstairs.

She knocks softly on Oliva's door, but hears no answer. She opens it up, and for a second she can't see anyone in the room. Well, apparently Olivia expected to be followed because she is under the bed.

Vala lays down on the floor with her head next to the girl's and they sit in silence for a long minute. Finally, Vala says, "You were happy at the not-a-marriage right? Did I do something wrong since then?"

"Did I?" the girl asks in a voice that is more like a sob than anything else.

"No of course not!" Vala says putting herself at an odd, and slightly painful angle in order to deliver a hug onto the girl.

"Really? Because when it was just me, and my brothers a "not-a-wedding" was good enough. Then suddenly there is another baby involved, and the marriage had to be real. Is it just because it's yours?"

"Honey, I think of you are mine too. That's part of what this wedding is about. I want to be able to claim you guys better. Honestly, your father and I didn't think this was that big of a deal. We were more or less married already. I'm really sorry that we upset you."

"You didn't even invite me to your wedding."

"We didn't invite anyone. We were married in city hall. We already did the huge wedding with all of our friends and family, this was just a formality. We would have waited until you were with us if we knew it was important to you. I'm sorry."

Olivia sniffled, "I guess it was stupid. I just always thought that if you got married you'd include us."

Vala turns to her remember her own orphan dreams from childhood, and that the girl beside her is, really, an orphan. "It's not stupid. I think every little kid who has parents that aren't married to each other dreams about their parent's wedding. I didn't really think of it that way or I would have been sure to include you. Actually, I guess, my flaw was that I didn't think you'd think of me as your parent."

"I'm sorry," Olivia says.

"Don't be! I'm unbelievably honored to be your mum!"

"You know Daniel proposed to Cassie before he did to my mom?" Olivia says.

"No, I didn't realize he liked his girls' that young," Vala teases.

Olivia rolls her eyes, "No, like he took her on a walk, and he got her a necklace, and he asked her if it would be ok with her if he married her mother. I don't know, I guess I always thought it would be like that if you ever decided to marry Dad."

"You wanted me to ask you before I married him," Vala repeats.

"Not exactly, I don't know, I guess I just wanted to feel like you were choosing me, and not just him."

Vala smiles at her, "Olivia Jackson, would you do me he honor of adopting you?"

She shakes her head, "I don't want you to do something just because you feel like you have to. Just because I asked you to."

"That's not why I'm doing this. I'm doing this because you are the most wonderful kid I have ever had the privilege of knowing. I'm doing this, because in a couple of months, I am going to have a daughter, and I want everyone to know that I already have one."

"Adria?" Olivia teases.

"Ok, two," Vala says with a grin, "Olivia, I so would not offer to do this if I didn't want to. I could get out of this conversation easy with an 'I love you' and the buying of a necklace on my way home from work. I'm choosing not to do that. I am choosing to make sure that you never doubt again that when I choose to be a member of this family I choose you as well as your father."

Olivia's eyes brim over with tears, and she slides out from behind the bed enough so that she can wrap her arms around Vala. The two share a long silent hug before Olivia backs up a bit and says, "Vala?"

"You still want me to pick you up a necklace on my way home from work, don't you?" Vala asks.

"Yes, please, I'm partial to amethyst myself," Olivia says.

"I am so rubbing off on you," Vala says.

"Well, I have to take after my Mum."

The Australian word, completely accidental, slips in. Olivia is claiming her as much as she is claiming the girl.


	125. 2006

**Note: We are now done with the Stargate series. However, there are a lot of characters who just need their lives neatly wrapped up, before we can say that we are done with them. So, I'm going to continue the longest story in the history of stories (well, apart from The Three Musketeers or what not). From now on I'm dropping that "Part" nonsense, and just giving you the year. Keep in mind, that I had season one of Stargate happen in 1995 in this story, so this chapter is one year after the events in the TV show Stargate: SG-1 are over for our characters. There is going to be more skipping around soon, because our characters have some growing up to do, and I hope to finish this story before it really is the length of an encyclopedia set.**

Daniel has often wondered at what exact moment he became a soldier. He certainly didn't notice it happening at the time, but suddenly one day he found himself so alert that he wakes to any sound in the night.

"Vala?" he asks as she attempts to get out of bed so smoothly that he would not notice.

"Go back to sleep," she says, tiptoeing away from him.

"What's going on?" he asks, flipping on the light, unfooled by the strain in her voice that always means she is lying.

She sighs, "I might be a tiny bit in labor."

"A tiny bit, huh?" he says laughing, "And why exactly were you reluctant to tell me?"

"Because you are going to be delivering a baby pretty soon, and I wanted you to be well rested. You can no doubt get in another half hour of sleep before you actually have to get up."

"Yeah, I think I'll be there for the whole labor, thanks," he says.

The fact that this was going to be a home birth, with Daniel playing midwife, was the first of many concessions to raising this child in a mix of cultures. On Vala's planet, childbirth was a family affair.

**Two Hours Later**

"I didn't think this home birth thing through!" Vala moans.

"Sweetie, with the way you are dilated, it is way too late to be re-thinking things," Daniel says.

"It's just that you're so busy down there, there is no-one up here to feel sorry for me and hold my hand."

"I feel sorry from you from down here. That should count for something."

"I want Olivia."

"Olivia? Our fourteen-year-old? You really want her to come in here and witness your labor?"

"Yes, please!" Vala says.

"You have got to be kidding me!"

"I witnessed my mom's labor when I was only five years old. You need to be more open-minded to my home culture!" Vala protests.

"You have a sibling? You never told me that," Daniel says in awe.

Vala shakes her head, and Daniel realizes with horror that this child must have been one of the many children that does not survive long in primitive societies. This is probably not the thing that she needs to focus on right now.

"Vala, I'm very sorry that you got stuck doing it alone, but we could have invited someone over earlier. I just don't think that is a good enough reason to put her through that."

"It's not a traumatic event that she has to survive. I felt really close to my brother and my mother. It's a bonding experience. I think with how old Livy is, and the fact that she's not genetically related to this kid, we might need a little extra help in getting her to feel like this is really her sibling."

"So, it's really for her?" Daniel asks skeptically.

Vala nods her head, and Daniel doesn't miss a tiny fleck of fear in her eye. Well, even if it isn't 100% for the girl, it is not likely to do her much harm, and his wife really deserves to have someone pay attention to her while she pushes a human being out of her body.

"Are you going to be ok while I go get her?" he asks.

At Vala's nod, he heads across the hall to his bedroom. He touches his daughter's cheek lightly, "Livy, honey," he says.

She opens her eyes right away, "Is there a new sister to greet?"

"Not yet," Daniel asks.

Olivia's face falls. She knows the birth plan, and she's pretty sure what her being woken up in the middle of the night means. "So something is wrong, and you have to go to the hospital. You need me to watch the boys, right?"

"No, nothing is wrong, it just turns out that Vala, as strong as she is, is not as strong as she thought she was. She wants you to come and sit by her while she has the baby. Now, if you don't want to, you don't have to. She doesn't need anything. She would just feel more comfortable, and I think she's a little bit scared."

Olivia crinkles up her nose, "I'm not going to have to see any of the bloody squishy part, am I?"

Daniel smiles, "I'll try my best to keep that from you, but I can't make any promise."

"Yeah, I'll do it," Olivia says after another moment of hesitation.

-0-

Hours later, it occurs to Olivia that this probably qualifies as the bloody squishy part. Her new little sister, Claire, after all, was covered in a slimy layer of blood, and was certainly quite squishy from head to toe. But it turned out, Olivia realized, that she didn't mind the bloody squishy part when it was also her family.

**Six Months Later**

Teal'c opens the door to see a boy right in the middle of blowing a bubble. His eyes are half-closed in a bored sort of look that Teal'c finds incredibly disrespectful, although he can't quite put his finger on why.

When the bubble finally pops on its own accord, unhastened by any idea of what was proper, the boy says, "Yo, here to pick up Tammy."

Teal'c raises his eyebrow.

"Dude, Tammy lives here, right?"

"Tammara, you are enquired after," Teal'c calls behind him without ever removing his eyes from the boy in front of him. The boy seems oddly unterrified by the man's actions, and that has Teal'c more than a little disconcerted.

Tam bounds down the stairs wearing less clothes than Teal'c has ever seen her in. She walks over by the boy. Teal'c is about to intervene, and prevent her leaving with this person who is so obviously unfit. Then he smacks her on the butt, hard. "Come on, babe," he says.

Teal'c reaches over, and grabs the boy by his hear. He pulls him to the door, and flings him out it, locking the door behind him, before the boy has even gathered up a protest.

He turns to Tammy, thinking that she is going to be mad at him for treating her boyfriend like that. Instead, he sees gratitude. She is crying.

He opens is arms for a hug, which he has found during his time on Earth, is a very effective way of dealing with people who are crying.

"Thank you, Teal'c," she says, sobbing into his giant chest.

"I would never allow someone to harm you," he tells her. That is something that she desperately needed to hear. That she desperately needed to believe.

**Note: I think this chapter is unclear. It's kind of a breaking the cycle of violence thing. Abused people tend to choose abusers. Not with Teal'c around you don't.**


	126. 2009 Part 1

"Get out of my way you fucking fag!" Ty immediately flattens himself against the lockers. It's not as if he's come out to his classmates (an operation that seemed less and less wise as he entered high school), and his genuine love of sports have actually done a great deal to camouflage his sexual orientation. Still, he does plenty of things that could easily let people know what he truly was.

When no blow comes, he realizes that they aren't talking about him. He looks over to see their target. He's tiny for hockey, even with all the hockey gear on he can't weigh over a hundred pounds. He's wearing coke-bottle glasses even though the rest of the world had converted to the newer technology of thinner frames. He was not about to defend himself. It not only looked like he didn't know how, but that he was such a pacifist as to take a beating without a word.

"Back off," Ty says, taking a step toward the crowd around the new kid.

"Come on, O'Neill, you don't want to shower with the freaking queer, do you?"

The idea has considerable appeal to Ty, but he's not about to admit that. Besides, he's not actually sure that the kid is gay. He's just not a jock.

"Come off it, the only person who accuses others of being a queer is probably queer themselves," Ty says. He hates using that word, he hates playing into their which hunt, but he has saved a kid from a beating.

The other kids wonder off with a few more slurs, and a nasty look or two.

"Thanks," the boy says, clearly ashamed.

"No problem. I'm Ty, and you are?"

"Eli," the kid says, extending one hand to shake hands. Ty is taken aback by the adult gesture, and doesn't respond for a second. The kid quickly covers by using that hand to push his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose, further magnifying his already brilliant green eyes.

Ty's heart skips a beat.

"So, welcome to the team," Ty says.

"Right, hell of a welcome party you've got there," Eli replies.

"Ignore them, they're jerks," Ty says.

"I'm not gay," Eli says quickly. All doubts Ty had disappear with the rapidness that the words escape his mouth. He is definitely gay.

"Ok, I'm fine with it either way," Ty says. He wants to tell Eli more. He wants to tell him that he himself is gay, but he doesn't dare. Not in the locker room, and not until he gets to know him better. After all, if Eli betrays him the next year, it is going to be him getting beat up in the locker room. Sure, he can take most of his fellow hockey players in a fair fight, but he isn't going to be able to do anything against the sort of odds that he will no doubt be up against if it came out that he was gay.

"Good, 'cause I'm not."

"Right, but you are the new kid, so do you want to come over to my house after school?"

The kid looks at Ty for a few long moments, considering, before he nods his head.

-0-

When Eli is stripped of all his hockey gear, he looks even more frail. Ty feels like he should wrap him up in bubble wrap to protect him from the world. The kid does it himself, though, with the donning of a giant downy coat.

"You know it doesn't get that cold in Colorado, right? Where did you move from?" Ty asks.

"Chicago," Eli says.

"Get out of town! My dad is from Chicago."

Eli doesn't look up from his blindingly white sneakers. His default setting seems to be watching himself walk.

"Look, man, if I said something back there that got under your skin, I'm really sorry. I'm gay myself."

"I'm not gay," Eli says, still looking at his shoes.

Ty lets the words sit between them for a moment before he says, "Right, well I hope my confession isn't going to get all over school."

"Geez, I'm not going to throw the guy who kept me from having the snot beat out of me under the bus, what kind of a loser do you think I am?"

Ty should have felt relief at the words, but he's so unsurprised by them that they have no effect. "Well, I hope that you don't stop being friends with me because of it, either."

Eli kicks a rock with his sneaker, marring its perfect surface with a tiny rub of scoria. "That would be pretty narrow minded of me, wouldn't it?" Eli says with a smile quirking at the corner of his lips. A smile of things that were shared by never spoken of.

"Downright homophobic," Ty says catching the smile.

"I'd be a bigot."

"Well we wouldn't want that," Ty says.

"Just don't ever give my parents a hint that you are…" Eli can't even bring himself to say the word, and Ty's heart aches for him. He was scared enough to come out to his parents, and he'd never been seriously worried about what they would do.

"Right, well, I'm only really 'out' to my family, and my best friend Olivia, so there is really nothing to worry about there."

Eli looks up into Ty's face, startled.

"Your _parents_ know? How bad did they flip out?"

"They really didn't flip at all. In fact, they kinda knew ever since I was young, and they just kind of let me know that it was fine, and I told them. That was it," he shrugs his shoulders, realizing for the first time what a blessing the fact that his coming out what a non-event had been.

"How did they kinda know since you were little? I mean, you're like an all-star hockey player out on the field. I certainly never would have guessed."

"Well, I wore a dress to their wedding, for starters," Ty says.

"Oh," Eli says.

"Then there was my love of ballet. I mean, I grew out of all of that girly stuff, for the most part. I'm not going to lie, I still enjoy it when my little sis Jenny asks me to play dolls with her."

"I don't do any girl stuff, and people still call me a fag," Eli says spitefully.

Ty doesn't know how to respond to that, so he just doesn't.

"My parents have never gotten over the fact that I am not an athlete. They think that if they just force me to try enough sports, one day it will sink in, and I will grow muscles, and start hating calculus like any self-respecting American male."

"I like calculus," Ty says.

"You've got to be kidding me? You've got a bod like that, mad hockey skills, _and_ a brain?" Eli complains, "They certainly broke the mold when they made you."

"Yeah, well, I don't have eyes which contain the entire universe," Ty retorts back, before he realizes that this is flirting, and that flirting might not be welcome by someone who claims not to be gay. Even someone who just complimented his 'bod'.

Eli seems to soak up the compliment though.

"So that's my house," Ty points as they approach. "I don't know if you want to watch TV, or do homework, or talk, or whatever."

"Actually, there is a show on this afternoon that I kind of wanted to see, but I'm sure that you would not be interested."

"What is it?"

"Wormhole Extreme."

Ty almost chokes on the mere thought, "I thought I was the only one in the whole state that watches that show! Well, that's not true. My family watches it too, and there are some friends of the family that we call our 'SG-1 family' after this team that they all used to be on, and that some of them still are. Yeah, they all watch it too, but I thought we were the only ones."

"It is my guilty pleasure. I usually like my sci-fi to be of a bit higher quality, but I just cannot resist that show for some reason or another."

"Oh, I hear you on that one," Ty says with another giggle. The truth is, he knows exactly why he likes the show so much, but he can't exactly admit that to his friend.

-0-

"Daddy!" Jenny calls, running through the house as Jack opens up the door.

He bends down to give a girl a hug, and then walks through the living room in dress blues. Jack doesn't often wear his dress blues, being much more comfortable in BDUs. Ty understands that most people are intimidated by Generals, but he grew up with it enough to be immune to this.

"Hi," Jack says, looking at Eli.

"Hello, Sir," Eli says with a touch of a stutter which must be leftover from childhood. He feels the need to stand up, even though they were a foot apart on the couch.

"This is Eli, from hockey," Ty says.

"Ah, you choose the best sport," Jack says.

"Well, his parents choose it for him, and he's not actually a big fan," Ty says

"Well that's ok, too," Jack says trying to smile and disarm the terrified young man before him, "You staying for dinner?"

"I'd bet… ter not, Sir, I have some unpacking to do," Eli says, taking a few steps toward the door.

"You can call me Jack, son," Jack says to the retreating form. As soon as the other boy is out of earshot, Jack turns to his son, "So, is that your boyfriend?"

"We're just friends," Ty says, but he looks a little bit nervous as she says it, and it's not missed by his father.

"It would be ok if he was your boyfriend. You're going to be eighteen in a couple of months. I have no problem with you starting to date."

"Right, well, that's a little problematic, considering the fact that I still haven't come out to people at school," Ty points out.

"Well, the people at school wouldn't have to know that you were dating, would they?" Jack asks.

"Eli says he isn't gay," Ty says.

"Yet he is?" Jack asks, not knowing if his gaydar is working properly.

Ty nods.

"Well, that could easily change when you get to know each other a little better."

"I don't know. I mean, I had just told him that I was gay, and he denies it like it would be the worst thing that could ever happened to him. I feel sorry for him. I think he is getting a lot of pressure from his parents not to be who he is."

"That sucks," Jack says in sympathy.

"Thank you for accepting me. I guess I didn't appreciate how big of a deal that was until now," Ty says standing up to hug his father.

"Of course, son, that is what a family is for."

**The Next Day**

Ty sits down next to Eli at lunch. He doesn't ask permission to do so, because he knows that if he did, the boy might say no. It's his second day in a new school, and Ty isn't going to let him sit alone. He doesn't know if they are friends or what, but he's going to find out.

"So your dad is a General then, right? Stars mean 'general', right?" Eli asks.

Ty nods his head.

"But not just any General, right? 'Cause there were a lotta stars."

Ty rolls his eyes, "If you got to know my dad, and found out how silly and goofy he was, you would so not be intimidated by a coupla stars."

"But you're the son of a General; that's a huge deal, right? That's like practically being the son of a president."

"Not even close! For one thing, I don't have to deal with the inconvenienced of secret service," Ty joked.

Eli looks around to make sure that no-one else is listening to their conversation, before he leans forward and whispers, "You came out to him?"

"Actually, I came out to three people who were or became Generals," Ty whispers back. "My grandpa is dead now, and he retired when I was pretty young, but he was a General. Then my dad is one. He keeps saying he is going to retire, but what he does for a living is super important, and he just can't bring himself to retire. My mom is a General too, she's oversees right now."

Oversees was code word for 'on a space ship', but Ty figured it was close enough; after all, gone was gone.

"Three generals? So, like, you are guaranteed to grow up and join the Air Force?"

"Oh, that is so not happening," Ty says with a laugh.

"Right," Eli says, flinching, and obviously thinking of 'don't ask, don't tell'.

"Oh, it's not that I couldn't join the Air Force. I just don't want to. They don't have a hockey team, for starters. I'm going to be a physicist like my mom. Well, obviously I could do that and be in the Air Force, like she is, but she doesn't actually get to do a lot of physics. She mostly flies around and saves the world. I want to sit around and think thoughts all day, and get paid for it."

"So, theoretical physics, then," Eli says.

Ty nods, pleased that Eli is as smart as he is handsome, not that the comment about liking calculus the other day didn't give him a hint.

Eli fidgets in his chair, "So, was your dad mad?"

"No, I'm allowed to have friends over," Ty says, confused.

"I mean… he didn't think… did he?" Eli asks, flustered.

"Actually, yeah he did, and he made sure I knew that he was fine with it if we were," Ty glances around before whispering, "… together. But I told him we weren't."

"Right," Eli says, with just the smallest touch of disappointment that Ty doesn't miss.

A silence hangs between them, pregnant with possibilities unfulfilled.

"So, who is your favorite character on Wormhole Extreme?" Ty asks.

"I like Dr. Levant," Eli confesses with a hint of admiration bordering on a crush in his voice.


	127. 2009 Part 2

**Weeks Later**

It didn't take long for Eli and Ty to become inseparable. They were lab partners in science. They always found spots next to each other during drills at hockey practice. They did their homework together, watched TV together, and usually ate dinner at each other's houses. Well, usually they ate dinner at Ty's house. Ty had gone over to Eli's house a few times. While his parents were welcoming of their son's friend, both of the boys felt more comfortable when they were at Ty's.

Each Sunday, Eli would fall of the grid. At first, Ty didn't mention anything about it. He figured that Eli just needed some time to himself. Ty still hadn't invited Eli to a team night, figuring the group would pretty much tease the poor boy into hamburger.

As the weeks passed, Ty began to wonder if Eli wasn't hiding something from him.

"So, do you want to come over and read some Wormhole Extreme fanfiction tomorrow?" Ty asks one Saturday.

"I can't," Eli says.

"Right," Ty says, giving him a verbal way out of the conversation, but locking eyes on him in a way that wouldn't let him weasel out any other way.

"Look, I go to church on Sundays."

"That sounds good. I haven't been to church for a long time. Actually, I think I was like five. I used to go sometimes with Teal'c and Shelby." While Eli hasn't met any of Ty's SG-1 family, he has certainly heard a lot about them.

"I don't think you want to go to church with me," Eli says.

"Why not?" Ty asks, wondering if there is still a lot about his friend that he doesn't know.

"I don't even want to go to church," Eli admits.

Ty doesn't have to ask why Eli goes then. He knows that Eli's parents can make him do pretty much anything with no stronger tools than a stern look. "Why don't you want to?" he asks instead.

Eli sighs, and looks away from him. "Let's just say that my church is not the most accepting of churches."

Ty's heart sinks, and he can't help but wonder if a great deal of Eli's desire to deny the fact that he's gay doesn't stem from this church. "Let me come with you," Ty pleads softly.

Eli shakes his head, and there are tears brimming in his eyes.

Ty has respected Eli's wish to stay friends. He thinks its bull crap, but he still respects it. He had never crossed the line into flirting or any kind of physical touch. Now though, he reaches over, and touches Eli's hand.

Eli pulls away like he is on fire.

"Sorry," Ty whispers.

"I don't want them to hurt you," Eli whispers.

If Ty had not already been in love, this whispered confession would have pushed him over the edge. It is the kindest thing he's ever heard of. "Eli, there is nothing anyone can say that is going to make me feel bad about who I am. I've got to figure that God made me, and he could have made me different. If he wanted me to be straight, I would be straight. I don't care who preaches at me, and calls me a sinner. Anyway, what are they going to accuse me of? It's not like I've _done_ anything! I'm probably a whole lot more sexually pure than most of the straight kids that go there. They are not going to hurt me, and I think my being there is going to help you."

Eli shakes his head, "No, you're going to think the less of me. You're going to think I'm weak, stupid."

"I've seen you do calculus. I know for a fact you aren't stupid. What? Do you think that just because I don't go to church that I think those who do are stupid? There are a lot of really brilliant people that are Christians. You don't have to turn your mind off to believe in God."

"You're going to think I'm stupid, because I believe them… that it's all wrong."

And there it was… right out loud. The reason that Eli would never confess that he was gay. The reason that Ty and Eli could never be together. It wasn't Eli's parents, like Ty had thought. If that were the case… well, there was always college next year or when they were adults.

How could you argue with God? How could you hope against God?

If someone's religion told them it was a sin to love you, then nothing else mattered. You love them? Irrelevant. They love you? Still irrelevant. You would be perfect together? Who cares?

"Eli, I'd still like to come," Ty says softly.

"Why? What good can it possibly do?" Eli asks.

"It's a big part of you, and until I go there I'm never going to understand it. I want to understand it. I want to understand you."

There is a long moment of silence that Ty is pretty sure is the same as the word "no", and then suddenly Eli nods his head.

**The Next Day**

At six-thirty the next morning Ty arrives at Eli's house in a suit and tie that makes Eli's heart skip a beat. They all load up into Eli's family station wagon.

Eli's father is an Elder. Ty doesn't know exactly what that means, but he can guess by the way it's said in reverence that it's something pretty important. The elders, and the Sunday School teachers, and all of their families gather in the empty sanctuary before Sunday School. They all join hands, and say a rather lengthy prayer about the Holy Spirit, and God speaking through all the Sunday School teachers.

Eli was next to Ty when the prayer began, so their hands are joined with nothing but a layer of adolescent sweat between them. Needless to say, neither one of them was very much focused on the prayer.

After that, they are off to Sunday School. Eli is in the high school boy's version of it. Lanky teens bustle around a room with couches and a foosball table until the "youth pastor", who looked way too young to have finished college, let alone seminary, calls them all to sit down.

There is another long prayer, and then they slog through a long passage of one of the minor prophets. They have to stand when the Bible is read, and do something called a "sword drill" whenever they have to find a passage to reference the one in the main reading. A sword drill involves putting the Bible on the floor, and waiting until the Pastor says to find a verse. When you are the first one to get your finger on the passage you win.

Ty is horrible at it, spending most of his time in the wrong testament. Usually, whoever was the first one done would come over and find the passage for Ty.

They assured him that he would get better at it. "Once you've read the book a few times, it's easy," said a kid who looked like the youngest one there. The rest of them nod, as if reading the Bible multiple times was the most natural thing in the world.

When they are done, there is a bit of mingling over coffee and doughnuts. The boys high school Sunday School mixes with the girls, and a few middle schoolers and young adults are the mix too. They are perhaps the friendliest bunch of kids that Ty has ever encountered.

Then there is a service that is almost two hours long to sit through. The service is a lot like the Bible study, only with a lot more people. They don't do sword drills, but each time the Pastor quotes the Bible (as he often did) they all flipped their Bible to the page, and read aloud. When they sang songs, they put their hands up in the air, and closed their eyes, and bounced.

The songs were better than Ty had expected. He'd been preparing himself for hymns, and these were definitely not hymns. As far as Ty could tell, they were rock music with the word "Jesus" inserted where the name of a romantic partner went in most songs.

When it was over, Ty thought it must finally be time for Eli's family to go home. Nope, apparently after church Eli's parents do something called "sheep care"*, and Eli has another youth event. There is a small kitchen in a hidden region of the church, and the youth all go there and assume their normal roles in the making of a five-course meal of lasagna.

The youth pastor's wife works next to Ty, pumping him for information about his life in such a way that it feels vaguely like a conversation.

Eli smiles at him from across the room, and Ty can't help but have his heart jump. The feeling causes a wave of guilt to cover him. It's probably a lot smaller than the wave of guilt that Eli feels. He wonders how people that are so nice could make him feel so bad about himself.

The youth eat one of the meals themselves, and then they take the rest of the meals around to older people in the church. Sometimes, they sit down with the older person as they eat their meal. Sometimes they fix some little thing around the person's house. There were a lot of cookies given by the older people to the teenagers, who consume them over the course of the afternoon.

At long last, Eli and Ty start walking back to Eli's house.

"I'm sorry," Eli says.

"What could you possibly be sorry for?" Ty asked.

"Six hours of church? It's not exactly what you would call a gentle introduction. You know you could have left at any time, right?

Ty nods his head, "I really didn't want to leave though. I don't know. I honestly enjoyed it."

"Right, well, today there wasn't any preaching on sexual sins. But being Sunday School, church, and youth group, there aren't a whole lot of weeks that go by without someone mentioning it."

"Was your old church the same, before you moved?"

Eli nods his head.

"That's a lot of condemnation to live under. I'm not surprised that you are trying to deny who you are," Ty says. Eli had never admitted to Ty that he was gay, but both of them by now were working on the assumption that he was, and Eli never corrected Ty.

"God isn't about condemnation. He's about love," Eli says, in a voice that has obviously repeated the words many times before.

"I actually kind of got that today. Still, you're being asked to be someone other than you are," Ty says softly.

Eli sighs, "You know, sometimes I get angry. There are all these people born good, and it's so easy for them. They just wake up each day, and follow God. He never asks them to do anything other than what they were going to do anyway. Sometimes I get jealous. Then sometimes, I read the Bible where it says that it's supposed to be hard. I read stories of martyrs and missionaries, and I wonder, are all of these people who have life so easy really the ones that are blessed? Maybe they are missing out on something good. Maybe they are missing out on all the good things."

"Still, you think that if he was going to ban homosexuality, he could have made a world where there was no homosexuality."

"Of course, and since pedophilia and murder are bad, he could have made us all incapable of that, too. Yet God decided to give his stupid little humans free will. I'm sorry, Ty. I know that you probably want more from this," he gestures between them, "But if I can't change, I'm at least going to be celibate. So… we're never going to be more than friends. I tried to make that really clear from the beginning, and I hope that I didn't mislead you."

"You didn't, Eli, and I am ok with being your friend. I'd certainly like to be more, but I can deal with friendship."

Eli nods his head, and they walk on in silence for a while.

"Can I come to church with you again?" Ty asks.

"Really? I thought for sure that all of that was just you trying to date me."

"Really? Church has a very sexual," he exaggerates the word to make it ridiculous, "vibe to it for you?"

Eli laughs.

"Nothing turns you on more than Bible passages and communion wine?"

Eli smacks his shoulder lightly, "Naw, I just thought you might be thinking that the whole 'yoked to a non-believer' thing was the reason I wasn't dating you."

"Well, no, considering the fact that I never heard of it. Yoked? Do you guys have a meeting every month (for about 10 hours, judging by your church service) to think up ways to confuse newcomers? Sheep care and yoked to non-believers, what next?"

Eli giggles, "It means that Christians aren't supposed to date someone who isn't a Christian."

"But in our case it doesn't matter, because no matter how Christian I get, I am still a boy, and you are still a boy."

Eli nods his head.

Ty sighs, "Right, well, did you start the book I loaned you?"

"Start it? I finished it in one night! It was amazing," Eli exclaims, glad to have something to eagerly chatter about other than the immutable facts of their non-relationship.

***"Sheep Care" is something that one of my churches did. At the time I was so into the culture it didn't seem weird to me. My mom visited me, and when they talked about sheep care she couldn't stop laughing. Yeah, sometimes we don't realize how odd our culture is until we can see it through other people's eyes.**

**Also, on a personal note. Eli's church is very much like the church I attended from age 12-19. I love it, I miss it. I now know it was so very wrong about some things. Eli's story is at least partly based on a friend of mine who grew up in the same church I did. Well, there is a lot of differences between Eli and her actually, but the honest internal conflict caused by her personal beliefs and her sexual orientation are there.**


	128. 2009 Part 3

**Six Days Later**

"Admit it, this is just revenge for me taking you to church," Eli says.

Ty shakes his head, "No, I really do just want you to get to know my SG-1 family. They are super interesting."

"So, do other people bring friends to this?" Eli asks skeptically.

Well no, Ty thinks to himself. Maybe what he is doing is a little underhanded. No one has ever brought a friend to an SG-1 night, only a boyfriend/girlfriend. Even more than that, someone that you think you are going to spend the rest of your life with. He knows that is true for Eli and himself, even if Eli really manages to pray himself straight, they are going to at least be friends for the rest of his life.

Right now, Ty is keeping the fact that he really hopes it is more than friendship, to himself.

"Sure, sometimes."

Eli glares at Ty, suspicious, but by then the doorbell rings, and the onslaught begins.

-0-

"I know what you're saying, Jack," Daniel complains taking a bite out of his rather charred meat, "But I just don't see why we can't save those people."

"Because we can't save the entire universe, Danny," Jack says with the error of an argument that he's had many times.

This conversation is reminding Eli of something good, but he can't quite remember what it is.

"Dr. Jackson!" Shelby calls from across the yard, and that makes everything fall into place for Eli. His mouth falls open. Ty catches his eye seeing that something is going on, but having no idea what it is.

"Dr. Levant!" Eli mouths.

Ty rushes across the yard to get Eli out of ear shot. "Why are you talking about Wormhole Extreme?" he asks with calm he doesn't feel.

"Oh my gosh, Daniel is Dr. Levant! And your dad…..your dad is Colonel Danny!"

Ty rolls his eyes, "My dad is nothing like Colonel Danny. He's never kissed an alien."

"Right, because if aliens actually existed statistically they wouldn't look anything like us. They probably wouldn't have lips."

"Oh, I don't know, they'd have to have something to eat with," Ty hedges making a quick glance at the four lipped aliens in the room that he'd grown up kissing.

"I'm sure aliens have a million different ways of eating," Ty says.

"I'm surprised that you even believe in aliens. Doesn't the Bible talk against them?"

"Not really. A lot of classic Christian thinkers from thousands of years ago believed that God could have created multiple worlds populated by different people. Even some popes and C.S. Lewis thought there could be aliens."

"I just wouldn't have imagined that your church would agree to this."

"Well, it's not exactly the kind of idea that I bring up in Sunday School*," Eli confesses.

Ty frowns, wondering how much of himself Eli is hiding from the people's whose opinions he most cherishes. He hides who he is sexual, intellectually, even spiritually.

"So, how did your dad end up in a science fiction show?"

"Well, they needed an Air Force consultant, and they asked him. They liked SG-1 enough that they decided to put them in the show."

"Wait, they liked SG-1 enough?" Eli says with raised eyebrows.

"Yeah," Ty says not understanding what he is getting at.

"Your Mom was on SG-1 right? So you're like related to Stacey Monroe?"

"No, because she's fictional," Ty says with a roll of his eyes.

"Wait, so all of those Colonel Danning/Major Monroe shippers were actually right?" Eli presses.

"Ok, let's get one thing straight. Wormhole Extreme is a television show. It does have certain parallels to my own life, sure, that's most of the reason I like it so well. But my mom isn't Major Stacey Monroe, she's General Samantha O'Neil. My Dad isn't some Colonel Danning, he's General Jack O'Neill. Teal'c is not a robot, and he does talk."

"But Daniel, he's Lavent, eh?" Eli says.

"No, he isn't, and don't wear that face when you talk about him. Eww," Ty shutters.

"I know they aren't like they ae on the TV show. They don't fight aliens," Eli says as if that were a ridiculous idea.

"Right, they don't fight aliens," Ty lies.

-0-

Vala runs up to Sam, "So, this new boyfriend of Ty's, do we like him?" she whispers.

"He's not Ty's boyfriend," Sam corrects.

"Please, you may have just returned from a journey on your little ship, but I know you know better than that. Can't you see the way the two of them look at each other?"

"Well, look aren't everything. I think both of them like each other, but from what Jack told me Eli comes from a pretty conservative religious family. The kid things it would be wrong to have feelings for someone of the same gender."

"Well, that's stupid," Vala says, "They expect you pick who you fall in love with?"

"Well, at least who you have a relationship with, if not who you fall in love with," Sam says.

"They might as well tell you that a certain color of hair is immoral, or that if your second toe is bigger than your pinky toe you ought to shorten it."

Sam sighs, "I spent all this time protecting my son from bigots. You know, I kept him away from people that wouldn't accept him. I changed people's mind when they thought there was something wrong with him. I thought…hey my son may be gay, but he's going to have an easy time of it. We made it so easy for him to come out to us. In the end though? None of it mattered. Because at the end of the day, I couldn't protect him from the whole world. He likes a boy, a boy who is so sure that being gay is wrong he's trying to fix himself, and I can't save Ty from that."

"No, but he'll be all right though," Vala says easily.

"Really? And how exactly do you know that?" Sam asks in exasperation.

Vala looks across the yard to where Ty has just joined a rather boisterous game of tag among the smaller children, "Because he's Ty."

***Any Christians out there getting angry with my interpretation, please be patient. I'm not bashing Christians. I am honestly representing the sort of churches I went to from ages 11-23. I'm not saying that Eli will be here forever. I'm not saying these churches are bad. Just wait.**


	129. 2010 Part 1

"Are you sure that you don't want to be roommates? I bet we could still get them to switch," Ty says as he and Eli pull into the parking lot of college. Ty's parents think that he chose to go to the college near their house so he could be close to his family and his extended family. Really, it was to stay near Eli.

Since they are just moving to Denver, an hour away, their parents aren't dropping them off, but coming later to help them settle in.

"I don't think you and I as roommates would end well," Eli says, blushing.

"Oh, I think it would end beautifully," Ty flirts. He's known Eli now for a number of months, and he's gotten bolder in his flirting.

Eli blushes. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure your beautiful ending and my bad one aren't too far apart."

Ty parks the car, and the two boys begin to unload their things, and take them to their perspective dorm rooms.

-0-

"Hey, I'm Ian," a kid extends his hand as soon as Ty enters the room. Ty can't exactly shake his hand until he puts down his boxes.

"Ty," he says, placing them on the bed without any bedding on it, and shaking the boy's hand.

"I'm here to study film."

Ty tries to smile like he thinks that's a real major, "Nanophysics."

"They paired me with a genius?" Ian says in shock.

"Not a genius," Ty says.

"Right, well, there is nothing wrong with being smart. Listen, I got this girl. So if I put a tie on the door, you know what that means?"

"Yeah, I'm cool," Ty assures him.

"Thank you," he says tapping him on the shoulder, "I'd be willing to give you the same chance if you've got a girl."

Just then Eli comes into the room, "Some of your hockey pucks got into my box."

"Or a boy," Ian continues.

Ty turns to him in surprise.

"I'm Ian, and you are…" Ian says to the new person in his room.

"Eli," he says, reluctant to put his hand out for a shake. So he just touches his glasses, even though they don't really need to get pushed up farther.

"I was just telling Ty that you're welcome here any time, and I can make myself scarce whenever necessary," Ian says.

Eli blushes, "I don't think this is going to be necessary."

"Ok, well, you can still come here, and hang out anytime," Ian says.

Eli nods, and heads out the room.

"You two dating?" Ian asks when the blusher is gone.

"Naw," Ty says, unpacking his box.

"'Cause I got a little vibe from the two of you. If I'm wrong, then, sorry. It's just that I have a brother who is gay."

Ty looks down, "Well, I haven't exactly come out to most people, but yeah. I hope you don't mind sharing a room with me."

"Not at all. So, you're telling me that Eli isn't? 'Cause, honestly, he gave me more a vibe than you did."

"He's trying not to be right now," Ty says.

"Oh, interesting choice," Ian says with eyebrows raised.

"Right, well, it's up to him."

"Look, if you're not seeing anyone, my brother is single."

"I'll think about it," Ty says.

**One Month Later**

Ty and Eli sit across from each other in the library. "I can't believe that you are taking a class on Islam. What would your church say?" Ty says, looking at the book that his friend is reading.

Eli cringes, "Well, considering the pancake breakfasts they served to give me a 'missionary scholarship' for me to major in religious studies and become pastor, they would be fine with it."

Ty goes back to his work.

"You're doing calculus again?" Eli says, obviously trying to read some of the work across the table and upside down.

"You know, this college does offer math classes. You could take one, and get your own textbook. It would be easier than upside-down calculus."

"I took more math in high school than is going to be required for my degree," Eli says.

Ty slides his chair over close to them, "You want to get a right-side-up look at it, at least?"

Eli smiles, "I should be studying my own classwork. I'm way behind on Plato."

"Plenty of time for that," Ty says.

Eli scoots his chair back, "Ty, I have something to tell you. I've joined an accountability group."

"Accounting? All they do is add and subtract, surely you can find someone who is doing harder math than that."

"Not accounting, accountability. It's a group of people who helps you be pure, thoughts and all."

"Right," Ty says working his jaw.

"I've wanted to do it for a while, but I didn't want to do it until I had some distance from my parents. This is a group specifically for those who struggle with homosexual thoughts."

"So, you're trying to pray yourself straight?"

"I wouldn't phrase it that way."

"This goes way beyond choosing not to act on your feelings, doesn't it?"

"I don't want to think these thoughts anymore. I don't want to feel them," Eli admits.

"So, are you telling me that we can't be friends anymore?" Ty asks raising his eyebrows.

"No, we can, we're just going to have to be really careful about… being close to one another, the flirting."

"Right," Ty says, moving his chair over to the other side of the table.

"I'm sorry," Eli says.

"Hey, you're allowed to do whatever you think is best."

-0-

When Ty returns to his dorm room that night, he says, "Your brother still available, Ian?"

"He sure is, man."

"I'd like to set something up with him."

"Will do, Ty."

**One Week Later**

Ty never would have planned the phone call for a time when Eli was in the room. He knows that it would hurt him, and he loves Eli, even if he's given up any hope of a happily ever after with the man.

Yet, fate would happen that the phone call comes in when Eli and he are studying in Eli's room.

"Hi, yeah, this is Ty," Ty says, turning away from Eli guiltily.

Ty listens for a while before giggling. It's a giggle that Eli has only heard a few times, usually after Ty has flirted with Eli.

"Friday night? Yeah, that sounds great. Where do you want me to meet you? You're going to pick me up? Yeah, that will work. Ok, see you then."

Ty clicks the phone shut, and sits for a moment in silence before turning toward his Eli once again.

"That sounded like you were setting up a date," Eli points out.

"Well, that is probably because I was. You might have decided to spend your life in celibacy. It's just not something we're all prepared to do."

"So you're dating now?" Eli says with a look of pain so pronounced that Ty can't help but look away from it.

"I'm not trying to do this to hurt you. If there was any way the two of us could be together, I would take it. That's not an option. So I'm moving on, Eli. I'm not going to feel bad about it."

"I wasn't asking you to feel bad about it."

"I want to date, Eli. I want to have a first kiss. I want to get married, and have sex, and have babies. I just want an ordinary life. The sort of life that billions of people enjoy."

"We're not normal Ty. We can't do those things."

"Sure we can."

"Marriage isn't legal for gay people," Eli points out.

"Well, not now, but even if the government doesn't marry you, there are a whole bunch of other ways to consider yourself married."

"Well, gay guys certainly can't have kids, and there is no way that you could argue with that."

"Well, having biological kids would be problematic, but that isn't the only way to have kids."

"So this is it; either I have a relationship with you, or you are going to be with someone else?" Eli says.

"This is not a threat, Eli, this is life. You chose celibacy. Great. I'm not choosing it," Ty says, trying to keep his voice even, and not let his annoyance get into it.

"Yeah, you can do whatever you like," Eli says.

"We can still be friends, right?" Ty asks, feeling as if his heart is going to break if Eli were to say no.

"Yeah, we can still be friends," Eli says as the pair of them turn back to the homework in front of them. Ty can feel that the climate of the room has completely changed, and it is chilly now.

**The Next Friday**

Chandler, Ian's brother, is a bit older than Ty pictured him. He's already finished college, and is working in some business job that Ty is not interested enough in to get more specifics on. When the two of them first sit down to dinner, the idea of dating is so thrilling and new that Ty is more than entertained. Bring here in public with a man, he was out in a way he'd never been before, and that was exciting.

When the butterflies in his belly begin to wear off, he starts to focus on what Chandler is actually saying. Suddenly, the whole concept of dating becomes a whole lot less interesting to Ty.

When Chandler suggests dessert, Ty makes up an early class the next morning. Chandler knows full well what he is doing, and doesn't make a single protest. He walks Ty to the door of his dorm hall like a gentleman.

Ty is pretty sure that Chandler is open to walking him all the way to the door of his dorm, and would also be open to a goodnight kiss. Ty doesn't want either of those to happen. He gives Chandler a goodnight handshake, which is even more awkward in practice than it was in his head. Then he turns and flees into his room.

When he gets off the elevator at his floor he is greeted by the sight of a distressed Eli leaning against his door. "I'm gay," Eli says.

One or two people in the hallway stop and stare. This is the first time that Eli has ever said these words old loud.

Ty blinks, "Ok," he says softly.

"Where is your date?" Eli asks, looking around, confused.

"The date is over," Ty says, coming close to his own door. Now he feels like he is towering over his friend, and he slips onto the floor.

"Did you kiss him?"

"No," Ty says firmly.

"You should go kiss him," Eli says.

"I didn't really want to kiss him."

"You wanted a kiss, you have to go get a kiss."

"Eli, you are not listening, I don't want to kiss Chandler."

"I'm not ready to kiss you yet. It's going to be a while," Eli says.

Ty smiles, "I didn't say that I needed to kiss someone tonight. I just want to kiss someone at some point before I die. I can be patient."

"I don't want you to have to wait," Eli says.

"Well, I don't want you to have to deny who you are," Ty says.

"I'm not denying who I am anymore. I said it out loud, I said that I was gay."

Ty looks away with tiny tears squeezing out of the corners of his eyes, "I think maybe you are still denying a part of who you are, it's just a different part than it used to be. I don't want you to have to choose between me and your religion."

"I'm not," Eli says.

Ty looks at him with a question on his face for a long moment.

"I don't know… I haven't got it all figured out again," Eli begins, "But I'm getting more and more sure that God wouldn't ask me to do what they do at those meetings. The God they talk about? He's not the God I know. He's not the God in the Bible."

Ty nods his head.

"God is love, you know. Not the denial of love. I'm just beginning to figure all of this out."

"I'll give you time to figure it out. We don't have to rush this."

Eli reaches over, and touches Ty's hand lightly. Ty grabs it firmly, but gently.

"Eli Swift, would you be my boyfriend?"

"Yeah, I will."


	130. 2010 Part 2

It was three days after Ty asked Eli to be his boyfriend that he actually asked him out on a date. He was insanely nervous about it. He felt like Eli might have changed his mind in the meantime. He also thought that maybe Eli had never really meant to come out in a way that other people would know he was out. He had said, "I'm gay," in a hallway, but that doesn't mean that he actually realized that other people were going to overhear him when he said it.

Eli agreed to go on a date with him.

Ty asked if he knew that he'd meant a public place.

Eli laughed, and nodded his head.

Being openly gay is still new for Ty, and he finds himself kind of glad that he isn't going to be running into any public displays of affection; there is no way either one of them is ready for that.

-0-

Ty stands outside of Eli's dorm room, and knocks on the door. Eli opens it, and then reaches over to get his dining card from the desk in his room.

"You're not going to need that," Ty informs him.

"I wasn't sure…" Eli says nervously, fidgeting with the plastic for a moment before he sets it down.

"I'm not going to take you to the dining center on our first date."

"I wasn't even sure who was taking whom," Eli admits.

"Right, that does get a lot more complicated when you're dealing with the same gender. I think the rule is probably whoever asks the other person out does the buying."

"I'm pretty sure me looking all pathetic on the floor of your dorm room counts as asking you out."

"You were a long way from pathetic, and I'll yield to you the start of our relationship, but I asked you out on this date."

Eli nods, and the two of them walk down the hallway, a few inches apart, just like they did when they were friends. Yet, somehow, everything is different than when they were friends.

"So, tell me about this accountability group that you go to."

"I used to go there. Don't worry, I'm not going to show up on Tuesday and confess my horrid sin of going out with you."

"That's not what I'm worried about."

"You just want to know why I'm going out with you?" Eli asks.

"No, there is just this big change in your life. You don't believe things that you used to believe, and you do believe new things. I just wanted to know how it happened."

"I guess it would have to start with the Plato that I had to read for my philosophy class."

"Plato?" Ty says in shock. "I guess I don't even know what he had to say about homosexuality."

Eli giggles, "I don't either; probably nothing. This thing is a lot more about my faith than my sexuality. I was reading Plato, and it sounded a lot like Paul. I mean, obviously there was the 'through the mirror darkly' thing, but there were a lot of other things that sounded like Paul's letters. So I started looking it up, and I am far from the first person to see the connection. Some people actually consider Plato a 'source' of Paul, and a lot of people think that when Paul stood at the 'tomb of an unknown god' in Athens he was standing at the tomb Plato put up for a god he invented. You know, he didn't like Zeus, because he had bad morals. So he invented a god that was not that different from the god that I worship, from Jesus."

"So that's pretty cool, right, maybe it supports that whole argument of God revealing himself to all people even if they never have a missionary," Ty says.

Eli looks at him in surprise.

"Hey, I listen when I go with you to church," Ty says, as the two of them push open the doors of the dorm, and walk into the dusky evening.

"Right, and maybe it would be cool if I wasn't looking at it through the point of view of my fundamentalist church. Plato might have gotten close to the truth, but he definitely wasn't there. Or you look at Socrates, who was also close to the truth, but he committed suicide. Then there are people like Gandhi, and Emerson, and Euclid, and since my church doesn't consider Catholics Christians, even Augustine, Galileo and Mother Teresa. All of these wonderful people who grasped some part of the truth, and who made the world better, and none of whom my church would accept as 'saved'."

Ty is silent, because he can't think of a word of comfort to offer.

"I'm supposed to believe they are in hell? That a loving God would send them to hell?" Eli shakes his head, "I won't believe in a God like that. If that's all there is, some divine tyrant who sentences people to eternal torment, because they were born two generations before the word of God came to their city. A God who makes people suffer for doing a good job of following the religion to which they were born, and never hurt a soul, a God who killed his own son, because the rest of us couldn't help but screw up a list of rules he gave to us… I won't worship that God."

Ty pushes the words past a lump in his throat, "So you lost your faith?"

"I'm not done with the story yet. Maybe I lost it for a while. Maybe that's not the right word for faith at all. I just… I was angry at God for a while. Really properly angry."

"So what changed?" Ty asks.

Eli laughs, "I started reading ancient Christians. I stopped just listening to what my church had to say about God. I'd tell them I had too much studying to do, and blow off church. Then I'd go back to my dorm and read people from thousands or even hundreds of years ago. They didn't all believe in hell. They didn't all believe that Christians still had to hold to anything in the Old Testament apart from the Ten Commandments, most of them didn't even believe in a literal six-day creation. You know that no-one really believed in that until the last few hundred years?"

"I had no idea," Ty says as he unlocks the door of his car. He thinks about going around, and opening up the door for Eli, but Eli is too quick for him, and soon has it open himself.

"So I realized that it was possible for me to be a Christian and believe in evolution, and hell being temporary, and universal salvation, and that it's ok to love someone of the opposite gender as long as you don't have sex until you get married. Well, some sort of marriage of the hearts, anyway, so long as the great state of Colorado won't offer us anything better."

Ty smiles as he backs up the car.

Eli waits until they are out of the parking lot before he says, "I hope that last part isn't a deal-breaker for you."

Ty shakes his head, "I'm telling you. I don't actually need those things right away, I just need to know they are possible."

Eli bits his lip, but Ty, driving, doesn't notice, "By 'those things', you're including babies, right?"

"You don't want to have kids?" Ty asks, without a hint of disapproval or dismay.

"I don't think it would be right to."

"Really? You think kids would be worst off with us than most parents?"

"I think they would be better off with a mom and a dad who loves them."

"Right; but in the real word, not every kid gets that. You know Shelby and Tammy?"

Eli nods his head, he seems to find himself at a team night at least every other month. He's quite familiar with all of the people that Ty considers "family" by now.

"Well, Tammy's father raped them both, and hit Shelby, too. I'm absolutely sure we could be better fathers than that."

"Right, but that's the point. We'd both be fathers. Every kid needs a mother and a father. We would never be enough for our kids," Eli says.

"I didn't have a father for the first three years of my life, and my mom was gone serving her country all through my high school years. I'm fine."

"Your dad was overseas for three years?" Eli asks.

"Wow, I can't believe this never came up," Ty says in shock, "My parents met in the Gulf War. I was an oopsy baby the result of them… sharing a tent while they were there. After the war, my parents lost contact with each other. My dad didn't even know I existed. I was three by the time they found each other, and almost four by the time they got married."

"I knew that you were older when your parents were married. I have heard the stories about you in a dress at their wedding. I had just always assumed that they were together through the whole thing, even if they weren't married."

Ty shakes his head.

"Wasn't it better when you had both parents?" Eli asks softly.

Ty finds himself having a much stronger reaction to that question than he thought he would. "Look, we've got plenty of time to figure out if we're going to have kids or not. I think before that happens we should figure out what we're going to eat on our first date."

"Right," Eli says, turning back to the road in front of him and ignoring the fact that his boyfriend is crying.

**Two Weeks Later**

"So you're going to be coming home for the whole Thanksgiving weekend, right?" Jack asks his son over the phone.

"I am, and I was wondering if I would be able to bring someone with me. Not that I've asked him yet, I was kind of hoping that I could know you were ok with it before I asked him."

Jack blinks in surprise. His son has never mentioned a special someone before, and taking someone home to meet your parents on a holiday weekend indicates a pretty serious relationship. He figures that he is going to have to do something to make his son more at ease sharing his dating life with him, "Of course, what is his name?"

"It's Eli," Ty says.

"Oh, I thought we were talking a date here," Jack says.

"We are," Ty says, his stomach curling up with nervous energy.

"You and Eli are dating now?" Jack says in shock.

"Yeah, for about a month now."

"For a month? You've been with Eli for that long, and you never bothered to tell me?"

"I don't know… it's weird to talk about this kind of stuff with you parents. Is it ok if he comes?"

"Of course, Ty; Eli is always welcome in your house. I'm actually glad that you and he have started something. I felt like there was something there from the very beginning, but that nether of you felt like you could act on it."

"Right, well that didn't have to do with you guys, it had to do with his family, and his church. He's… adjusted his beliefs a little bit now, and we are so not telling his family. Actually, that is one of the reasons that I wanted to invite him home for Thanksgiving."

"So you plan on using your family to hide from his family?" Jack says in a disapproving voice.

"Not hide, exactly, it's just that… well, you know, it would be nice to have him in a place where everyone accepts him for a holiday. He's never had one before where he didn't have to pretend, and about a whole lot more than just his orientation."

"Has he told his father that he doesn't want to be a Pastor? His folks are shelling out a lot of money for that kid's education. I think they deserve to know that it is going to be a waste."

"His parents aren't actually helping him with college, although his church is."

"That makes it worse!" Jack exclaims.

"Look, Eli is still going to be a Pastor. He is just maybe searching for beliefs that are a little different than the ones he was raised with. He's trying to find his own way to God. I think he could do with a little bit of acceptance on his way there. Can he find some at our house this Thanksgiving?"

"Yeah, of course," Jack nods into the phone. He might not agree with all of the decisions the kid makes, but he is capable of accepting him.

**The Next Day**

Dating has become comfortable and familiar for Ty and Eli. They no longer have to fret about who is going to open the door for whom (whoever gets there first) or who is going to pick up whom (whoever is closest to the location gets picked-up) and it's been a long time since their hands met awkwardly over a check (it's a simple rotation, if you didn't pay last time it's your turn).

They spend a lot of their dates arguing philosophy or religion or history or playing Wormhole Extreme trivia (which Ty usually loses, because he confuses the show with real life).

"So, I was wondering if you would come over to my house for Thanksgiving," Ty says.

"Well, I don't know about on the exact day, but I'll definitely stop by at some point in the weekend."

"No, I mean, like… for the holiday, for dinner," Ty says.

Eli stops in the middle of chewing his hamburger, and stares at Ty in shock, "It's a family holiday."

"I know," Ty says.

"Man, we are not family."

"There is a good chance we will be someday," Ty says, with his cheeks turning red at the thought he has so frequently said in his head, and so infrequently said out loud.

"How am I supposed to explain this to my parents?" Eli protests.

"Just tell them you are coming over to my house. You don't have to tell them why," Ty advices.

"Well, that's good, because I'm not too sure that I am clear on the 'why' myself."

Ty hadn't planned on saying this, but now he doesn't see any way around it, "You deserve to be somewhere where you don't have to worry about how to explain something. Where when you do explain things, you do it with the truth. I know that right now, you've got a lot of ideas that are up in the air, a lot of ideas that you don't plan on letting your parents know. Not all of them have anything to do with us. I just thought it might be nice to be around a family that isn't going to judge you."

"They aren't my family, though," Eli points out.

"They could be," Ty says, and then realizing how his words sounded he quickly follows up by saying, "That was not a proposal. I'm just saying… even if the two of us don't end up together, which I am really hoping we do, my family could be yours."

Eli is touched to the soul, and he looks away for a moment before saying, "I'll try to make it work."


	131. 2011

"Horses, seriously? We're going to ride behind horses?" Eli asks.

"Don't you like horses?" Ty asks, with way more panic than the question needs, although Eli is completely oblivious to it.

"Yeah, horses are great, it just seemed like it was a little bit over the top."

"It's our anniversary, nothing is over the top," Ty states.

"I so don't deserve you! You're like the most romantic guy ever, and I am such a dud," Eli says as he climbs into the carriage.

"You are so not a dud," Ty insists, taking his place next to his partner taking his boyfriend's hand, "And I am sorry that I'm too sappy."

"Are you scared of horses or something?" Eli asks.

"No why?" Ty says.

"You hand is drenched in sweat!"

Ty pulls his hand away, and wipes both palms on his pants while muttering, "Sorry."

"I can't believe it's been a year since I was a jealous puddle outside of your dorm room."

"Thank goodness you did, because I never would have found anyone as great as you," Ty says.

Eli tilts his head toward Ty's so that they touch, just barely. Although they've been kissing in private for a couple of months now, Eli is still not ready for a public display of affection beyond hugging and hand holding. The two of them have developed a sentimental head bump as a secret code word for a kiss.

"So, Eli, what do you think we'll be doing on our fifth anniversary?" Ty asks.

"I don't know, that's still four years away. It's tough to even imagine it."

"We'll have been graduated for two years, so I suppose you'll still be at seminary," Ty says. He's hoping this is going to get Eli to open up about other plans. Maybe plans that involve something other than his career. His partner however is completely silent.

Ty forces himself to focus on the horses before him. It was a stupid idea to wait for the proposal at the END of the date, wasn't it?

-0-

Eli is fumbling with the lock to his door, and Ty figures that he is just doing that by way of distraction when he thinks of how he is going to respond to the note that is written on his door. Then, the lock opens, and Eli walks into his dorm room, and waiting for Ty to walk in and give him a goodnight kiss.

He expects Ty to just walk in and give him a goodnight kiss. Ty is dumbfounded. Is Eli saying no? Is he pretending like nothing happened?

Ty is frozen on the spot. He's dreamt about this for months, and in none of his visions did Eli pretend that it wasn't happening.

"Ty? Are you ok? You look sick; do you want to come in and sit down?"

"No?" Ty says.

"Was that a question?" Eli asks, completely confused.

Ty shakes his head, and then nods it, "You're saying no?"

"No to what? You didn't ask me anything did you?" Eli says, searching his mind for the memory.

Ty points to the white board on Eli's door. The one he'd asked Olivia to write his proposal on while he was on a date with Eli.

Eli's eyes go wide, and his mouth drops open.

The sweat on Ty's hands increases in volume, and his stomach begins doing some sort of black flips that he can't identify as excited or terrified. He's putting all of his brain waves into trying to categorize them, because then there will be no brain waves left over with which to panic.

"Ty, why don't you come inside?" Eli asks.

"No, inside is where you are going to say no. If you were going to say yes, you would do it in the hallway. If you were going to say yes, you won't be worried about me making a scene. I'm going to stay out here, where the good answer is."

"Tyler O'Neill, my answer is going to be a little more complicated than 'yes' or 'no', and I want you to be sitting down when you hear it. Ok? Now come on in, and you know I love you."

Ty nods, but doesn't move.

Eli takes his hand, and runs it down Ty's arm in a way that he knows causes goosebumps to populate it. When he reaches the hand, he gives it a gentle tug, and Ty follows him into the room, and allows the door to be shut.

"Why do you want to marry me?" Eli asks when they are both sitting cross-legged on his bed a few minutes later.

"Because I love you," Ty says with a smile.

"Ok, right, but why now?"

"Because I love you now?" Ty says, as if confused by the question.

Eli sighs, "Ty, we're super young. Nineteen. Not many people get married at nineteen."

Ty shakes his head, "We're not getting married right now. We're getting engaged. I thought we could wait until next year on our anniversary to get married."

"Ok, well, twenty is still pretty young. Besides, what exactly do you mean by 'marriage'? We can't get legally married."

"No, but there is this designed beneficiary agreement thing that I looked up. It's the closest we can get to marriage right now. Of course, that would just be the signing of some legal forms. But I would want to have a big ceremony. You know, have a wedding, even it isn't legal."

"Ty, you don't just want to get married this young so we can have sex, do you?" Eli asks, blushing at the question.

"No. I mean, I do want to have sex with you. But this marriage isn't all about that. I want to spend the rest of our life together. When we think about our future I want us to both see the other one. I want us to live together, and eat all of our meals together…"

"We already eat most of our meals together," Eli interrupts.

"I want to eat_ all _of our meals together. I want to sit next to you and do homework, and share the Sunday morning paper, and wake up next to you, and just be together."

"You want to promise forever in front of all of our family and friends, and share holidays," Eli says.

"Oh," Ty says, not having considered the implication behind Eli's words in all of his planning.

"You want me to tell my parents we're together, and would they please come watch their minister son desecrate everything they believe in?"

"You won't have to tell them," Ty whispers.

"Ty, when I get married, I want my parents there."

"Who are you marrying in this imagination?" Ty asks.

Eli leans forward, and brushes bangs off Ty's face, "You. I definitely know it would be you."

"So, it's kind of like a yes, but really a no?" Ty asks.

Eli nods, "I told you this answer was going to be complicated. I'm not really ready to be married, or even engaged. But I love you, and I want to marry you someday."

Ty nods his head feeling a great deal less devastated than he had a few minutes ago. "So, I wasn't sure what the rules on engagement were when you were both boys. I mean… usually the girl gets a ring, and you're not a girl, so…"

"I don't need anything," Eli says.

"Well, I got us matching watches. Is that weird?" Ty asks, pulling his out of his coat pocket.

"Not weird at all," Eli says, opening the box.

"You like it?" Ty says with a flinch.

Eli nods his head as he puts it on, "Now every time I check the time I'll be thinking of how I wished I was spending time with you."

"You can do cheesy," Ty says with appreciation.

**The Next Day**

"So, how did the engagement go?" Olivia asks, plopping her tray down next to Ty.

"Pretty good," Ty says, while stirring raisons into his oatmeal.

"Pretty good? You got engaged! How can it only be pretty good? It should be amazing, life changing, the most amazing thing that has ever happened to you!"

"Well, we didn't actually get engaged," Ty says.

"What?" Olivia practically squeals, "If he said no, that doesn't qualify as 'pretty good', and I'm definitely going to beat some sense into his head!"

"He said 'not yet'," Ty says, putting his hand on her arm to calm her.

"Oh," Olivia says with, the wind clearly knocked out of her sails.

"We're really young, and he hasn't told his parents yet. I get it, and we're happy together. There is no need to rush things. I just thought… we'd been dating a year, and we'd known each other for almost two years. I didn't really think that I was rushing things too much."

"But you are young," Olivia says, offering her friend a smile.

Ty nods his head.

"So, did he give you a guess on when you wouldn't be too young anymore?"

Ty shakes his head again.

"Oh, you know what you should do? Make this proposal an annual event until he says yes! I mean, it might take a couple of years, until you are out of college or something, but you could propose each year on the same date, and at some point… he would say yes!"

"You don't think it's too pushy?" Ty asks.

"I think it might just be the most romantic thing that I've ever heard of," Olivia says, wearing what Ty has come to call her 'swoon face'.

"Being an English major has completely ruined you. You read far too many dusty romances."

"My dear Tyler, there is no such thing as 'too many' of any sort of books."

"How is your real-life romance going?" Ty asks.

Olivia rolls his eyes, "He was obviously not even aware that it was our anniversary. He did nothing. Well, that's not true, he burped in my mouth during a kiss."

"That's disgusting," Ty says, making a face.

"Or apparently funny, if you have a Y-chromosome," Olivia corrects.

"Nope, I've got the Y-chromosome, and it's disgusting."

"Sometimes I forget you're a boy," Olivia says thoughtfully.

"Well, thanks so much for that!" Ty exclaims.

"Is it weird that we share an anniversary when we're not… together?" Olivia asks, stabbing her breakfast.

"No, I think it's a kind of cool best friends thing," Ty says, nodding his head with assurance.


	132. 2012 Part 1

"So, am I ever going to get my turn at planning an anniversary?" Eli asks over his chocolate-colored strawberry that Ty had made him.

"You get Valentine's Day, we're even," Ty retorts, holding up another strawberry to feed to his boyfriend. If they were in public, Eli probably wouldn't have taken it, as they were the grabs it playfully. Then Ty takes a ring shaped box, and hands it to the man before him.

"No, you're not going to be giving me jewelry every year. Besides, I am not ready to say 'yes' to that question."

"Well, I didn't get you jewelry, and I want to keep asking, unless that's offensive or something."

"It's not, I just don't want to hurt you by saying no," Eli says, running his hand through Ty's hair.

Ty bites his lip, "I get all the reasons why you are opposed to just flat-out marriage. But what about something in between?"

"In between? Ty, you are either married or not. I am seriously concerned by the fact that someone I'll probably marry someday believes there is something called 'sort of' married."

"Not like that. I just mean a private marriage. Something where we start living together, and promise to be with each other forever. We just don't have to sign any legal documents."

"And how exactly would I explain that to my parents?"

"Tell them you are my roommate? I mean, you have a roommate now, right? How would getting an apartment with me off-campus be any different?"

"Well, I don't have sex with my current roommate," Eli says.

"Well, we won't tell your parents about our sex lives," Ty teases, touching Eli's knee in a way that has on previous occasions increased Ty's chance of winning an argument.

Eli brushes him away from his knee, "Ty, they're going to figure it out. I mean… the bedroom situation."

"I thought we could have two bedrooms, one of them would be yours, with a queen bed. The other would be mine with a twin. Of course, mine would be a bit less used…"

"I don't want to lie to them," Eli says.

"You're already lying. I'm fine with the truth, but if you're not ready for that… this is an option," Ty shrugs. "If you want to continue living like we have been for two years… talking, kissing, not touching. I'll do that. I just want to start my life with you. I want to share a toaster, and see you when you first wake up in the morning."

"I'm actually pretty gross first thing in the morning."

"I doubt that," Ty says.

Eli looks at Ty's eyes for a moment, before he lets out a long sigh, "Can I give you a 'maybe'."

Ty nods, and gives him a long sweet kiss, "Ok, open the box now!"

Eli opens it to find a note that starts the treasure hunt.

"I mean, the ending is kind of ruined, because you already figured out that I was going to ask you to marry me."

"The box was a dead giveaway. But it could still be fun to go on the adventure," Eli says, kissing Ty.

**A Week Later**

Ty is talking about something he learned in physics class, or engineering class; Eli isn't sure to be honest. All he can focus on is the way that he stirs his coffee. Two spins counterclockwise, two spins clockwise, to be repeated five times, and followed by a double tap on the side of his coffee cup with his spoon. Eli supposes that Ty has to do something to integrate the massive amounts of sugar that he puts into his coffee.

He knows so much about this man: that he's a genius, that he's kind, the way he has to make sure the cheesiest part of a Dorito is always down on his tongue. Still, there are a lot of things that he doesn't know about this man; not yet anyway. He doesn't know what Ty looks like when he wakes up in the morning, or what color his toothbrush is, or what it feels like to make love to him.

"We should pick a time, then," Eli says, interrupting Ty mid-sentence, and failing to realize that he hasn't given the poor man enough context to understand him.

"For what?" Ty asks, confused.

"To go apartment hunting, of course," Eli says.

Ty's face breaks out into a huge grin, "So you're saying 'yes'?"

"I want to have a private, non-legal ceremony when we move in, but yeah, I'm saying 'yes'."

Ty stands up from his chair, and pulls Eli into the kind of hug that Eli's grandfather used to give him back when his grandfather was strong and Eli was young. The kind of hug that you are not altogether sure you are going to survive.

"What is going on?" Olivia asks as she sets her tray down at their usual table. Blaze rarely eats breakfast, it happens to early in the day, and so Olivia usually joins the boys.

"We're getting married," Ty gushes.

Some little part of Olivia, one that she'd laid aside with her American Girl Doll, wishes that when Ty said those words he was talking about a different 'we'. The rest of her, well, it flings it's arms around the both of them, and gives them a giant hug.

**Two Weeks Later**

Rya'c walks into the house as Cassie is grabbing her keys. Their three daughters run in after him.

Cassie's eyes bulge, "I thought you were going to take the kids for the whole weekend. Camping, you were supposed to take them camping."

"Right, well Aaliyah is terrified of bugs, and it was raining, so I just figured that I would bring them home. That's not a problem is it?"

Cassie's eyes flick around, "No, It's just… aren't the kids going to be really disappointed?"

"They're fine. They're going to watch _the_ _Little Mermaid _yet again, so it's probably best to avoid the living room for a while. I know that you really don't want to get those songs stuck in your head. Well, I guess that isn't a problem, because you were going out."

A tear slips out of Cassie's eye, and Rya'c lifts his hand to whip it away, with a question on his face. "You weren't supposed to know."

"What am I not supposed to know?" he asks.

"It wasn't even supposed to happen. We were careful. We were so careful!"

"Whatever it is, I can help," Rya'c says.

She falls into his arms, and cries.

"Do you need me to drive you somewhere? I could call someone to watch the girls?" he asks softly running his fingers through his hair.

"I'm not going anywhere. I was only going to go somewhere when I thought you wouldn't know about it… now…"

Rya'c can't think of any explanation apart from the fact that she is cheating on him, and the way she is leaning on him seems to eliminate that possibility.

"Ok, then let's get you to bed, and I'll make you some lunch, yeah? Maybe you'll feel like putting together sentences that contain complete thoughts after lunch."

"Don't be nice to me. I'm pregnant," she whispers.

He pulls back his head in surprise, "You told me you couldn't get pregnant."

"What I meant by that was, if I got pregnant it would die."

"Oh," Rya'c's face grows somber, and he holds her tighter, "So how long do we have? Are you in any danger? Were you going to the doctor? I'll go with you. I can't believe that you weren't going to tell me! I want to be there."

She pulls away, "Sixteen, it will die when it's sixteen."

"Days?"

"Years."

He looks at her with wordless shock.

"Well, it might be the sixteenth birthday, or it might be a first kiss. It's kind of unclear, because in my case they happened at the same second time."

Rya'c takes a step back, "Sixteen? She's going to die in sixteen years? How did you think you were going to keep me from seeing it? You were going to kill our baby?"

"It's not a baby yet, it's a bundle of cells. I was trying to do this before it became a baby. Before I held it and loved it, and took it to preschool."

"So it's all about you, then?" Rya'c accuses her.

"No, I tried to save you from any of this. If you had just taken the girls on a camping trip, you never would have known. By the time you came back, I would be up and around. You never would have had to suffer; it was all going to be me."

"I'm talking about the baby. If you kill it now, you don't suffer, but it doesn't get sixteen years of good life."

"Stop saying 'killing'," she whispers.

Rya'c nods, "Ok. You're not going to do it now, though, right? You're not going to have an abortion?"

Cassie sits for a long second without having any reaction.

Rya'c sighs, "I'll take care of it. The baby."

"You said you were ok with not having any kids."

"Yeah, when I thought my fiancé was telling me that she couldn't have kids. Not when she was talking about aborting one that already existed."

"I can't do this. If I carry this baby around inside me for nine months, I'm going to love it. If it lives in this house with us, it's going to hurt when it dies."

"Again, you're not thinking about the baby," Rya'c says, touching her arm.

"I am doing this for the baby! It's going to be born with an expiration date on it. It's going to miss all the good parts in life!"

"If you have this baby, it won't miss ring-around-the-roses, chocolate cake, and those little footie pajamas. Besides, we have sixteen years to save this baby."

"I almost died from this," she says, looking at him.

"That sickness that made you move things with your brain?" he asks.

She nods her head, "There was a fever, too and…"

"It hurt?"

Cassie nods her head.

"We're going to make sure that our baby has a really good life, and we'll do everything we can to save her," Rya'c says.

"I don't want to do this," she says, and he takes her into his arms again, running his hands through her hair.

"I'm going to help you. I'm going to do a lot of the childcare stuff, when it comes. I'll get an operation so we don't have to go through this ever again. It is going to be ok."

She sniffles against his shoulder.

"Mommy, I want popcorn," Keisha says, coming into the room.

"I'll get it for you. Can you go take Mommy and give her some snuggles?"

"Yep," Keisha says, putting her hand in her mother's.

Cassie narrows her eyes at her husband. He knows how sick of this movie she is.

"And that is all the revenge you'll ever get from me; consider yourself lucky, my love."

**A Week Later**

Daniel sits on the porch, and smiles when Cassie comes to sit next to him. "Is it ok if I join you?" she asks.

"I got the sense at that big family dinner that you wanted some alone time with Daddy. I came out here just for that."

Cassie nods her head.

"What's wrong sweetie?" he asks, pulling her into a side hug.

"I'm pregnant," she says.

"Right. I'll contact the SG-C, and they'll start working on a cure for that… retrovirus thing. We'll probably need some blood samples after the baby is born."

"Do I tell it? At what age are you old enough to deal with the fact that you are going to die?"

"We're all going to die, sweetheart," he says, kissing her temple.

"This is different."

"Would you have wanted to know?" he asks.

"No," she says.

They sit together in silence for a bit before he says, "So, getting excited about my new grandbaby, is that going to make it better or worse?"

"Not yet," Cassie says with a smile.

"Ok, so I will celebrate after you leave."

"I don't want to love it."

"You can't help that, it's your baby."

"Yeah, it is," Cassie says, putting a protective hand over her belly.


	133. 2012 Part 2

**One Months Later**

"Absolutely not," Jack says, crossing his arms.

"You said you were OK with the fact that I was gay."

"I am, this has nothing to do with that! This has to do with you living with your boyfriend! I wouldn't let your sisters live with their boyfriends!"

"They're younger than me."

"You're a sophomore in college. You're too young to live with your boyfriend!"

"Why?"

"Why?" Jack repeats, his eyebrows shooting up, "Because you are way too young to be having sex. Maybe you're already doing that, but if you start living together… I'm just not encouraging it."

"We're not having sex. There is no way Eli would ever do that until we were married."

"So you honestly plan on living together without having sex? Ty, that is way too hard for any romantic couple to contemplate, especially young hormonal ones."

"No, we're… we're kind of getting married," Ty says.

"What do you mean by 'kinda getting married'?" Jack enquires.

"Yeah, that's what Eli said. Listen, we can't get legally married. Eli still doesn't want to tell his folks. So we're going to say marriage vows, and we're going to be married."

"Can I come?" Jack asks softly.

"Without his parents…" Ty tries.

"You're still young to get married, Ty. I would rather you waited a few years. I think you would have a better chance of working out that way."

"Dad, Eli and I are going to work out."

"Every college kid thinks they are going to be with their college sweetheart forever…" Jack begins.

"Dad I knew, I knew from the moment I saw Eli get pummeled on those lockers that we were going to be together forever."

Jack sighs, "Your mother is home in a few weeks, can we have a reception or something? It could be just our immediate family, or it could be a larger group."

"I'll see what Eli says."

**One Month Later**

"So, are we going to move our stuff in or get married first?" Ty asks his husband as they stand before the door of their new apartment.

"I'm still trying to figure out who carries whom over the threshold," Eli says.

"Oh, no, you don't," Ty pleads.

Eli scoops him up, and whisks him over the doorway. Ty grabs the doorway, and stops him cold. Eli wasn't expecting this, and it causes him to drop Ty, and fall. Ty loses his grip on the doorposts, and falls on top of him. Laughter turns to kissing.

"I think marriage sooner rather than later," Eli says.

"Good call," Ty says helping him off the floor, "How exactly are we going to do this?" Ty says glancing around at the empty apartment for something… holy.

Eli grabs Ty by the back of the neck, and pushes their foreheads together. Then he lets go of Ty's neck, and rests his hands on Ty's hips. He settles Ty closer to his body.

"Ok, I have got to start attending this new church of yours more regularly," Ty says.

Eli laughs, so close that Ty can taste it, "The benefits of a private wedding. I promise that as long as we are living I will be yours. I love you with my heart, my mind, and my body. From now on, every decision I make will have you as a factor. I will love you forever."

Eli waits for Ty to start his vows, and when he doesn't hear him begin, he starts to worry that Ty is rethinking it. Then he feels a drop land on his lip. "Ty, are you crying?"

"Shut up!" the hockey player replies.

Eli pulls away so he can see him more clearly, "It's ok. You can cry. After all, you're not wearing a dress on you wedding day.

Ty smacks his husband cheerfully on the shoulder. "I'm not going to top your speech. I got too much of my Dad's genes to be very good at the sappy speeches. I will tell you this. We are partners for life. We are an eternal team. I can't wait to start our adventure together."

Eli grins.

"I may now kiss the groom?" Ty asks.

Eli leans forward, and kisses Ty instead.

Ty pulls away a few minutes later, and gets his breath together before saying, "As much as I would love to continue that, everything we own needs to be moved this weekend, and the guy is delivering our furniture in a couple hours…"

"And we have to go to our wedding reception at your folk's tomorrow afternoon," Eli reminds him.

"Right, so we'd better… pause on the kissing for a bit," Ty says.

-0-

Ty reaches for Eli, and he sees something like a flinch. He moves his hand away. Eli reaches for him, but the flinch doesn't leave his face. Ty pulls away.

"What's wrong?" Ty asks softly.

"Nothing, I just need to get over it."

"What do you need to get over?" Ty asks.

"I've read up on it in my pastoral care unit. Sometimes when young Christians get married they have a hard time moving from the 'sex is bad' thing to the 'yippee fun' thing."

"And it's even harder in your case," Ty says, running his hand through Eli's hair. He's back in familiar territory, and elicits no flinch.

"Right, but it's no big deal. We have to push through, and it will be fine," Eli says, leaning toward Ty.

"Ah, no way in hell!" Ty says, scooting back just an inch. "Sex is supposed to be fun."

"It will be… when I get used to it."

"No way. You didn't have to get used to kissing, or holding hands. You _wanted_ to. We'll wait until you want this too."

"But it's our wedding night!" Eli protests.

"Yeah, and that's exciting enough. I'm going to get to spend a whole night beside the man I love. Maybe, if I'm really lucky he'll hold my hand," Ty says, offering his up.

Eli takes hold of it, "What if I'm never ready?" he asks.

"Then I guess you'll get you wish, and we'll both be celibate."

Eli glances at his husband, and sees that he's serious. "I don't think you can fathom how much I love you," he says, curling up next to the boy.

**The Next Day**

When the car pulls up holding Ty and Eli, Sam runs toward it. Ty opens his arms for a hug, but she wraps her arms around Eli, and says, "I just can't believe my little boy has gotten married."

"Ah, mom, I know you've been gone for a while, but you do know that I am your little boy right?" Ty asks.

"Yes, but he's the new one in the family, so he gets to be hugged," she says, not moving from her place.

"I bet you're glad we're not all planning on hugging you like that," Daniel says, approaching the group. They had decided that all of the SG-1 family had to be a part of this, the second marriage of an SG-1 baby. Sam reluctantly releases poor Eli, who is a little the worse for the wear.

"I don't think he'd mind a hug like from Daniel," Ty says.

Both Eli and Daniel's faces flash deep red.

"Your husband has a crush on my husband? That is just hilarious!" Vala exclaims.

"I do not have a crush on Daniel! I may have been intellectually fascinated by a fictional character based on him at one point in time, but even that isn't true anymore!" Eli says blushing.

"Dr. Levant? Eww," Vala says.

"Daniel is a lot like Dr. Levant," Jack says.

"He has never once suggested that glowing skull has rights," Vala defends crossing his arms.

"He once suggested a swarm of homicidal insects had rights," Teal'c puts in.*

"Don't forget those lizard people that were into terraforming," Jack says.

Before Jack can even realize his mistake before Eli, who didn't know about the Stargate program, Daniel covers. "The Laz people."

"Oh, and he did once suggest that a mountain was alive," Sam adds.

"And not with music," Jack adds.

Vala glares at them.

"They're not wrong," Daniel says, with a shrug.

As they all walk into the back yard for grilling Eli whispers to Ty, "I love how they act like aliens and stuff could be real, like it is on the show."

"Right, they are great at pretending," Ty says, wondering if he made the wrong call on not telling Eli about Wormhole Extreme. Sure, it would be illegal to let the cat out of the bag, but sometimes Ty could just feel himself not caring.

**Six Months Later**

Cassie didn't hold the baby the whole time that she was in the hospital with it. That was ok, because he was there to take care of the baby during the day, and the nurses could do it at night.

Except it wasn't ok, because eventually that little girl was going to be old enough that she would know that her mother didn't love her, and that was not the kind of pain that Rya'c wanted any child of his to ever feel.

The day after they come home, he makes sure to get Cassie all comfortable in bed, because humans take so much longer to recover than Jaffa women did. Then he make sure to take care of the baby, and got the children off to school (putting the baby in a car seat to come along to drop them off, because he didn't really want to leave her alone with her mother). Then he rocks his baby to sleep, and hops in the shower.

When he comes out of the shower, he hears singing. He pokes his head into his bedroom, and sees his wife cradling the tiny Ann, singing a lullaby from her homeworld that she sang to the older girl'=s when they were sick.

"I can take her," he offers.

"We're fine," she says, not even able to look up, because she is so mesmerized by the tiny face before her. "Ann cried while you were in the shower, and I changed, and feed, and rocked her. We're fine now," she repeats, but there are tears in her eyes.

"Cassie," he says, sitting down on the bed next to her.

"I knew that I couldn't make myself not care, or even not love her. But I love her so much," Cassie sobs.

"I know," he says, wrapping his shower-damp arm around the back of her neck.

"Tell me everything is going to be all right," Cassie demands, not lifting her eyes from the baby's face.

"What do you mean 'going to' be all right? It already is all right. Right here, in this second, everything is perfect."

***Some of the following are made up.**


	134. 2013

Eli wasn't really surprised. It was his anniversary after all, and he would have been more than a little bit disappointed if he had come home, and Ty hadn't done something crazy.

He shouldn't have even been surprised that it was a marriage proposal. It was tradition, after all.

He just wasn't really expecting something as public as chalk all over the drive way. Really artistic chalk all over the drive-way, but still.

"Ty, you do know that my parents are coming this weekend."

"I know, I'll wash it off, if you want me too," he says, wagging my eyebrows.

"You really expect me to let my parents know I'm gay by having them read a marriage proposal written in chalk with rainbows and what I can only describe as philosophical pictographs?"

"Why not?" Ty asks, with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Yeah, we're going to be washing that off before they get here."

Ty nods his head, and shares a kiss with his husband.

Eli debates whether to share what is on his mind. Finally it wins out, "Ty, why is there a marriage proposal on our driveway?"

"Because I love you?" Ty asks, somewhat confused by this line of questioning.

"Aren't we already married?"

"Sort of. This marriage proposal is for a real wedding. I know that we aren't going to be doing it anytime soon. I just thought… every year I would ask you, and one day you would say yes."

"What about our marriage isn't real?" Eli asks. He was trying to be everything that his husband wanted. He thought their relationship was pretty good. Their love life had heated up. They had finally found ways to split the household chores without fighting or getting condemned by the health department (there was a four month mutual toilet cleaning strike that got pretty dicey, though). What wasn't right about it? What wasn't whole?

"Babe," Ty says, in what Eli liked to call his wounded puppy voice, "I wasn't saying anything bad about our marriage. It's real. It's fabulous. I just mean, someday… I want your parents to know. Someday I want to do it legally, if things keep drifting in that direction. Someday, I'd like to add some kids to the mix."

Eli tries to smile, but he can feel that his face is doing more of a terrified grimace.

Ty laughs, actually laughs at him! "Calm down, sweetie. I don't expect that we're going to do any of those things yet! I was mostly asking so we could keep up the tradition. We'll do all of those things when it's right for us."

Eli manages a nod of his head now. But that's a bit dishonest. He isn't sure that he is ever going to be ready for most of the things on that list. He kind of figured this would be enough.


	135. 2014

"Morning," Ty says, rolling over and looking at his husband in bed.

"No," Eli says, grinning.

"I haven't asked you anything yet," Ty says.

"No," Eli responds.

Ty immediately sees the trick to it, and says, "Is that all you are planning on saying today?"

Eli flinches, not having foreseen this complication. "No."

"That's good, because I was just going to ask you if you wanted a quickie before we had to go to work."

"Yes!" Eli says.

"I knew I could get that word out of you before long," Ty says with a proud giggle.

-0-

When Eli walks out of his senior seminar, he sees his husband walking toward him.

"Who is the hunk with the flowers?" one of his fellow (female) classmates says.

"That's my husband, it's our anniversary," Eli says. Saying things like this, even among religious people, has gotten a whole lot easier for Eli since he found his theological footing. He no longer worries if he is maybe making the wrong call, and going to spend eternity in hell for it.

"Hey," Ty says.

"No," Eli teases, going for a kiss.

Ty pulls back in surprise, "You just kissed me in public."

"Happy anniversary," Eli says, blushing.

"Look at the note in the flowers," Ty prompts.

"I know it's going to be a proposal," Eli says.

"So look anyway," Ty says.

"Not yet, love."

"Until next year, my love," Ty teases back.

"I like the flowers," Eli says.


	136. 2015 Part 1

Eli opens his eyes, and sees a room covered in pictures. Each one is suspended from a piece of yarn from the ceiling, "What did you do?"

"Pictures from our relationship," Ty says.

Eli stands up, and looks at each of the pictures in turn. When he gets to the door, there is a question mark.

"You're not even going to ask the question?" Eli says.

"I don't know what the future would hold. So, I left it as a question. Flip it over for the question that you want."

Eli does, and smiles at the proposal cut from the newspaper so they are filled with words, one of his favorite things.

"You're not saying anything," Ty says nervously.

Eli looks at him, "I didn't know that I had to. I thought you knew the answer by now."

Ty tries to hide his disappointment, and fails, "No, because it's legal now, and we're out of college. You went to seminary, and I followed you. You just don't want to marry me, not really. You just don't ever intend on telling your parents that we are together, ever."

"I do," Eli says.

"I have asked you to marry me for years."

"Ok, then stop asking," Eli says, annoyed, "Do you think I like saying no anymore than you like hearing it?"

"So, you're never coming out to your parents? We're never going to be legal? We're never going to have kids?"

"I'm not even done with college!"

"I'm starting to figure out that 'not yet' is a code word for 'never'," Ty says sadly.

"No," Eli says.

"When?"

"Not yet."

"Ok," Ty says, walking out of the room.

"Ty?" Eli says, following after him.

"Just give me some time."

"But it's our anniversary," Eli mutters to himself.

-0-

It seemed like a good idea when she talked it over with Ty, it really did. It's their anniversary. He hadn't asked her to get married. She wanted to get married. So she should ask him.

Now, she was having second thoughts.

"Hey, breakfast in bed," she says, pushing open the bedroom door.

"Umm, what time is it?"

"Eight o'clock," she replies.

"It's Saturday. I still don't understand why people insist on getting up before noon on a Saturday."

Right, he hated breakfasts. What imaginary boyfriend was she proposing to?

Don't answer that. Nope.

Especially not with the name of the gay best friend you planned this proposal with.

If only her mind were actually listen to all those frightfully intelligent instructions that she was always giving it.

"Just come on, this is a special occasion, our anniversary. You can get up early with me once a year."

"Fine, as long as it is only once a year," he grumbles sitting up.

He uses his fork to cut off a big hunk of pancake, and shoves it into his mouth.

"Wait, didn't you read it?" Olivia asks frantic.

"Read my pancake?" he asks with his eyebrows raised.

"Blaze, just read what is left of it."

"Olivia, is this a proposal?" he infers from the "Will you marry…" left.

"Yeah," she says grinning at him.

"Are you aware that traditionally men propose to women?"

"Were you planning too?"

"We're in college, Liv," he says, falling back on his pillow.

"No, you're in college, because you're on your relaxed 'five year plan'. I graduated. I have a real job, working as a journalist. A job which pays our rent."

"Dude, calm down."

"We've been together for five years."

"It's before noon," he groans.

Olivia sighs, "Right, we'll decide our life in a couple of hours," she says, taking the plate with her.

"Leave the pancakes."

-0-

"He is such an ass," Ty says on the phone.

"No more than Eli is," Olivia agrees.

"Hey, Eli didn't eat the pancakes that I made for him," Ty says, defending his husband with no small amount of fury.

"That's only because you didn't make him any pancakes!" Olivia explains.

Ty bursts into laughter, "Are we really arguing about which one of our boys is a bigger jerk?"

"We were, yeah," Olivia says.

"They're not really jerks, though. They're just not choosing us."

"They're choosing us, they're just not choosing forever," Olivia corrects.

"It kind of feels the same… you know, sometimes," Ty mutters.

"Sometimes I worry about that whole 'why buy the cow' thing," Olivia admits.

"Sometimes I worry I'm never going to be a father. That I'm going to be his dirty little secret forever. I just wish he wasn't ashamed of me. At least you don't have that problem with Blaze."

"Oh, no, that isn't an issue. Blaze is quite willing to brag about the fact that he's sleeping with me to everyone he sees. You and Eli are talking about having kids? I didn't know that."

"Well, I've talked, he's never objected. I'm starting to think that he doesn't even really want them."

"Is that… a deal breaker for you?" Olivia asks softly.

"I honestly don't know," Ty says, and he tries desperately to think of something less idiotic to say.

"I don't know how you were planning on doing it when that day came but… if you need a female help to make your dreams happen, I'm here for you."

"Did you just offer to have my babies?" Ty asks.

"Yeah, I did," Olivia says seriously.

"That, my dear, is the best offer I've had all day.

"Ty," Eli says as he walks through the door.

"I've got to go, Liv," he says.

"Let me know how it turns out," she requests before they hang up.

Ty turns to Eli and finds himself praying that his partner isn't going to leave him. He isn't yet sure if he believes in heaven or hell or angels or God or anything else that they talked about in church. He does know that the practices and beliefs are seeping into his life by osmosis no matter what his mind is doing. It's real prayer, even if he isn't yet sure if it addressed to a real being.

"Hi," Eli says.

"Hi," Ty says.

"I'm going home for Thanksgiving. I'd like you to come with me."

"Is this the grandest gesture I get? An invite for the holidays?"

"That's what families do," Eli says with a joke on his lips.

"Are we family, Eli? Because last time I checked, I didn't exactly call your folks 'mom' and 'dad'."

"Hey, I don't call you parents that either."

"No, but they've asked you to. The fact that you haven't is just another big neon sign pointing toward the fact that you are not nearly as far into this relationship as I am."

"I'm in this relationship," Eli says, putting a hand on Ty's shoulder.

Ty pulls away from, "Eli, it would kill me if the two of us were to break up."

Eli smiles, thinking that he has won the argument, "It would kill me too, I guess it's a good thing that we aren't breaking up."

"Sometimes I think about how much it would hurt if we waited a couple of years to break up. It would hurt even more."

"Ty…" Eli begins, but he is too heart-broken to think of anything to put after it.

"Eli, today Olivia asked me if not having kids was a deal breaker for me. I hadn't really thought about it before. But yeah, it is. I know that you are not wild about the idea of having kids."

"We'll have kids if it's really important to you, Ty," Eli says.

"When? Eli, give me a year."

"How about this? You come with me to Thanksgiving, and you come out to my parents. We let them adjust to that news, and then I come out. When the steam as stopped coming out of their ears, we'll tell them we're engaged. After the wedding we'll start working on having kids."

"You're ok with this plan? I don't want to feel like I'm forcing you. I feel like I've been forcing you through ever step in our relationship. I don't mean to always be threatening to leave, that's not how I want it to come off but…"

"Not having my parents know about you… about the best part of my life, is really starting to wear on me to. I already came out to an entire church full of people, an entire college, and your family. How hard can it be?"

"I guess we'll find out when I go first," he teases.

"Hey, you are my little rat," Eli teases.

"Rat?" Ty asks. scrunching up his nose.

"Well, they use those in testing way more often than they use Guinea pigs."

"Please never call me your rat again," Ty begs.

"Ok, little mousy-wousy," Eli says with a grin.

"So these kids we'll have some day, were you thinking more along the lines of surrogacy or adoption, because today Olivia offered to help with whatever plan we had."

"She just sat there and offered to have your babies?" Eli asks.

Ty shrugs, "Well, they could be your babies, too? I don't know how many you were planning on having. Maybe we could each have a biological child."

"I'm still working on the fact that you want to make babies with your ex-girlfriend."

"We have been over this, Liv is not by ex-girlfriend," Ty says with a roll of his eyes.

"The two of you dated."

"We pretended to date."

"Whatever, I want to have a kid with you, Ty, not watch you have a kid with a woman."

"Adoption, then?"

"That might be the less… emotionally charged way for me," Eli says with a smile, "You know that it's still probably going to be a couple of years before we have kids. I am guessing that my parents are not going to have a very quick cool down from finding out that I'm gay."

"I know," Ty says, and the pair sit in silence for a couple of seconds, "Eli, what happens if they never come around? What happens if they just stay mad forever, and never accept us?"

A visible shudder goes through Eli.

"I'm so sorry! That was a horrible thing to say. Forget that I ever mentioned it!" Ty exclaims.

"No, it was a fair question. At some point the two of us would forget about them, and move on. But this some point is going to be a long time from now. We're going to be patient and give them a lot of time to work through things. They are going to need it."

"I love you Eli," Ty says with a giant smile.

"I know."

"I'm sorry, that isn't enough for me," Ty whispers.

"We're going to make it work," Eli says, giving Ty a reassuring smile that doesn't quite reach all the way to his eyes.


	137. 2015 Part 2

**Three Weeks Later**

"Ty, I'm so glad that you could join us for Thanksgiving," Eli's mom says smiling at him.

"Yes, I was glad I could make it," he says formally.

"I wasn't sure if you guys were just sharing a car ride home or if you would be spending some time with us over the holidays," Eli's father asks.

"I was hoping to be able to stay with you over the weekend, Sir," Ty says, his hands breaking out in sweat, and they aren't even to the crux of the argument yet.

"Aren't your folks doing Thanksgiving this year?" Eli's father asks.

"Robert! You sound so rude. We really are glad to have you here, Ty, Eli doesn't bring many of his friends around," Eli's mom says nervously.

"I didn't mean it to be rude, June," Robert says, neglecting to apologize to the person he was actually rude to.

"My family is doing Thanksgiving, but I chose to come here instead," Ty says with sudden bravery.

June's lips twitch, she's confused by this, but she smiles and says, "Well, aren't we just lucky that you made that choice!"

"Let's get your things up to my room," Eli says, smiling at Ty.

-0-

"So, when do you want me to tell them?" Ty asks as he puts his bag on the floor.

"I don't know. I was kind of picturing it as being during dinner tomorrow, but that might ruin the whole holiday."

"I think whenever we do it, it's kind of going to ruin the holiday," Ty says. He then looks at the single bed, "I forgot what the bed situation is in your house. We are going to get all cozy tonight!" Ty exclaims.

"You can't be serious, right?" Eli asks.

"What are you talking about?" Ty asks.

"We can't sleep in the same bed in my parent's house! We'd so get caught!"

"So? They are still going to think that you are straight."

"Crawling into bed with a gay man isn't exactly going to help prove that point," Eli says, and Ty notices he's sweating. He remembers that this is hard for his husband, and that if it wasn't for him, this might just be something that his husband never did.

"Ok, I think we should tell them sooner rather than later so we can all stop sweating bullets," Ty says.

"Hear, hear," Eli says, and the two of them head downstairs.

-0-

Ty wants to hold on to Eli's hand a bit after the family says grace together; after all, he is going to need a little bit extra strength for what he is about to do. Eli's drops his hand like it was made of fire. Eli's hand is drenched in sweat, and Ty knows it's time to get this over with.

"I actually had something I wanted to share with you," Ty blurts before any mundane discussion can get started. "I'm gay."

Robert and June blink at the boy before him, and don't say anything for a long time. No-one is eating, and finally Ty breaks the silence by bringing a forkful of peas to his mouth. He isn't really hungry, but it's better than the silence.

"Did you know about this?" Robert asks, looking at his son.

"Yes, Ty came out to me in high school. Some bullies were beating me up, and calling me gay on the day that we met. He told me he actually was…" Eli begins.

"And you told him you weren't?" June asks in a frantic voice that breaks his heart.

"Yes, anyway. I've known for a while, and by now Ty is out to just about everyone, and he didn't want to keep lying to you guys," Eli says.

"Son, do you know what the Bible says about homosexuality?" Robert says, and for a while Ty is pretty sure that he's taking to Eli. Then he realizes that 'son' is meant for him.

"Yes, sir, Eli and I have studied those passages. The danger of living with a seminary student," Ty says, giving a glace to his husband, which contains only the smallest hint of the love he feels for him.

"Then you know that you're going to hell," Robert says frankly.

"Dad!" Eli says, trying to get between them.

"No, sir, I don't believe in hell," Ty says evenly, not letting his eyes leave the older mans.

"You're not a Christian, then?" Robert asks.

"Sir, there are a lot of Christians who don't believe in hell, and even if I did believe in it, I don't think that God would send me there for being the way He made me."

"The Bible says He will," Robert says.

"Where in the Bible do the words 'homosexuals will go to hell' appear, sir?" Ty says.

"This is not appropriate talk for the dinner table," June says, and both Ty and Robert fall silent under her power.

For a second. "You can't keep living there," Robert says to his son.

"What?" Eli says, devastated by this unforeseen complication.

"You can't live with a homosexual atheist," Robert says.

"He never said he was an atheist," Eli objects.

"He also didn't say that he weren't, which is a good as saying that he is," Robert declares.

"Boy that sentence was full of logical fallacies, and bad grammar; did everyone get a bun?" June asks holding up a basket of buns that made the rounds minutes before the discussion begin.

"Eli isn't moving," Ty says firmly.

"Then you are," Robert says.

"No, we're adults, and we're not doing anything wrong," Ty says.

"It's not appropriate," Robert says with his eyes raised, "To have two guys living together, when one of them is gay! It would be like you living with a girl before you're married. Now, maybe you didn't see anything wrong with it before, but that's what you have parents for, to show you the error in your ways."

"Actually a parent's job is to love and support their kids," Ty points out.

"You're not my kid. My priority is protecting my kid from bad morals," Robert points out.

"So it would be different if it were me?" Eli asks softly, and Ty's heart breaks under the hope in the question.

"If you thought you were gay, we'd make sure to get you the help you needed," Robert says.

"The help? You're talking about accountability groups, then?" Ty asks, gritting his teeth.

"They have proven to be very helpful in helping people deal with…" June says softly.

Ty doesn't wait for whatever harmful characterization is about to come out of her mouth, "Why do I need to be changed? God made me this way."

"A serial killer could argue the same thing…" Robert begins.

"Dad, let's not do the homosexual theology, please. Trust that Ty and I have talked about all of these things," Eli breaks in.

"Look, I don't care what you do, I just care what my son is being exposed to," Robert says.

"I would never hurt Eli," Ty says.

"I know," June says, bowing her head, "Does anyone need more meat?" she asks eagerly, passing around a tray.

-0-

Ty isn't at all surprised when he hears quiet crying before he gets up to Eli's room. He is supposed to be spending the night on the couch, but he knew that it would be a rough night for his partner, and couldn't resist checking on him.

"Ty, you're going to get caught."

"I honestly don't think they could be any angrier than they are," he says, sitting on the floor next to the bed and running a hand through Eli's hair in a way that he knows sooths him.

"Yeah, that did go pretty badly."

"I can't believe they expect me to move out," Ty says.

"I know, maybe we'll find you a place closer to your office. You have a pretty long commute right now."

"Are you talking about buying some place just to fool your parents with? That's a pretty expensive lie, honey."

Eli looks at Ty, confused, "Didn't you hear the part where they said we couldn't live together anymore?"

Ty scoots away from his husband as if he as if he was made of fire, "You're not serious, right? What, do you think they're listening? You don't really expect me to move out!?"

"Ty, it's just temporary…" Eli begins.

"No, we're married. I was ok with you going all slow and letting them know things bit by bit, but I didn't think our relationship was going to be going backward."

"Not our relationship, just our living arrangements."

"Eli, we're married. When married people start to live apart, unless there is some temporary business-related travel involved, it pretty much means their marriage is over. Do you want our marriage to be over?"

"Of course not," Eli says, reaching for Ty's hand.

"Ok, then we keep living together. If you want to hide it from your parents, we'll do that, but I think it's a bad plan. I think we should just tell them the whole truth, let them fume for a while, and then get married and have babies."

"Is that all you can think about? Your biological clock is really ticking Ty, you won't even give me a couple minutes to deal with my family issues before you threaten me that we have to have kids."

"It's not a threat!" Ty says in something closer to a normal voice than a whisper. Eli's alarmed eyes makes him cover his mouth, and they listen for a second before they are assured that no-one heard them.

"It feels like one," Eli tells him.

"Well, I'm sorry about that. I don't need to move forward, but I won't move backward. If you kick me out…"

"Say your threat," Eli challenges.

"It's not a threat, it's a fact. If you don't want to be married anymore, than we're not. I don't have to tell you what you good book says about divorce, but that's your choice. At least you were too cowardly to ever do it legally, so there is no paperwork," Ty says standing.

"Ty," Eli begs.

Ty sits down next to him, "Is that you telling me that we're going to go home together when this weekend is over?"

Eli shakes his head.

Ty bends down, and gives him a long slow kiss.

"Did we just kiss and make up?" Eli asks, confused, when it's over.

"That's goodbye, love," Ty says, walking out of the door.


	138. 2015 Part 3

Jenny wakes to the sound of sobbing, and it doesn't take her long to figure it's coming from her big brother's room. She knocks on his door, and when she doesn't get a response she just walks in.

Ty is sobbing on the bed, and doesn't even look up at her entrance.

"I thought you were going to be at Eli's all weekend," she says softly.

"We broke up," Ty sobs.

"You can't break up. You're married," Jenny says, alarmed.

"Shut up!" Ty says, flinging a pillow at her.

Jenny knocks on her parent's door, and as soon as Jack gives her a muffled ok to enter, she runs in, "Ty and Eli broke up."

"What?" Sam says, sitting up, confused. "No, Ty was spending the holiday with them."

"He's in his bedroom sobbing about the break-up as we speak," Jenny says.

"Thanks for telling us, munchkin," Jack says, having completely failed to notice that his youngest daughter was now a teenager and wouldn't like to be called munchkin anymore.

Sam and Jack both go into their son's room. "Hey, Tyler," Sam whispers, "What happened?"

"He kicked me out," Ty says.

"Eli's dad?" Jack asks.

"No, Eli," Ty corrects.

"He just told you to leave their house for a while his parents cool down, right?" Sam asks hopefully. She knows that her son was planning on coming out to Eli's family this weekend, and hopes that it didn't go that badly.

"No, his dad told him that he couldn't live with a gay man. His dad doesn't even know that he's gay. He just doesn't want me to corrupt his son or whatever. Anyway, his dad was laying down the law, and I wasn't letting it bother me, because I figured it didn't matter. I figured that really, as soon as Eli and I were alone again, things would go back to the way that things were. But he was serious when he agreed with his dad. He actually wants me to move out."

"He's going to change his mind. He'll miss you," Sam says, rubbing his son's back like he's a little kid.

Ty rolls over, and looks at his parents, "Is it ok if I stay here?"

"Of course, this is your house. You never have to ask to spend the holidays with us. In fact, we were pretty disappointed when you first told us that you were going to spend Thanksgiving with Eli's family. I mean we understood, but we were still sad."

"I don't just mean the holidays. Can I live here for a while?" Ty asks.

"Of course, honey, but what about your job?" Sam asks softly.

"I'll find another one. I only moved there and took that job, because of Eli. I'll find another one closer to my family. I find a place too, it's just going to take a while."

"Ty, I don't can't switch jobs because you had a fight with your husband," Jack says with a sigh.

"Dad, this was a lot more than a fight," Eli says.

"I know that it feels like that now. Right now this probably feels like the biggest thing that has ever happened to you, but…"

"I'm not some teenage boy who just got shot down by his crush, Dad. I'm an adult who has had his heart broken by the only man he's ever loved," Ty says.

"Ok," Jack says quietly.

**The Next Day**

Olivia can't help but grin as she holds her tiniest niece in her arms. Anne was nearly a year old and loved nothing in the world quite so much as attention from adults.

"Are you going to hold that baby all day?" Blaze asks her.

"Probably, I've got to do something until I get one of my own," she grins at him. She's so certain that he's going to say yes. She's so certain that it's only a matter of time. She's so sure that any day now, she's going to wake up to her own pancake proposal.

Blaze suddenly knows that this isn't right. She would wait for him forever. No, that is a lie. She would wait an awfully long time, and then one day, she would stop waiting. But by then, she would have waited so long that her heart would shatter into a million pieces when she left.

He didn't want her heart to be in a million pieces.

"You really think you're ready for one of those?" he asks.

"Yeah, I think we are," she says brightly.

"No," he shakes his head, and looks away from her, "I'm not sure I'll ever be ready for one of those."

"What? You don't want kids? You said you wanted kids!" Olivia accuses.

"When did I say that?" Blaze asks, mentally searching through all conversations that took place while the TV was on for a likely culprit.

"On our first date. I asked you if you were going to have kids someday, and you said probably."

"Ok, well, first of all, that is a far cry from 'wanting' kids, and second of all, that was on a first date. People will say anything on a first date."

"There might not have been a second date if you didn't say it," Olivia says, trying to not raise her voice enough to attract the attention of her family, which is barely out of earshot during this whole conversation.

"Olivia, we are nowhere near the place where we could even think about having kids," Blaze says calmly.

"Let's not talk about ready or not, let's just talk about whether or not you want kids. Blaze?" Olivia looks at him with pleading eyes.

"Liv, I don't want to get married. I don't want to have kids. There are only so many hours in a week, and I don't want to spend them all on a family."

"Then what the hell have we been doing for the last five years?" Olivia asks.

"I don't think you're supposed to swear in front of those," Blaze says, pointing to the baby.

"What did you think we were doing?" Olivia repeats.

"I thought we were having fun. Enjoying one another."

"Why can't we do that forever?" she asks.

"Because at some point, it would stop being fun and start being work. Let's even forget about the idea of kids for a bit. The truth is, if you want to stay with the same person forever at some point you have to start working on the relationship. I don't intend to do that. When we start to crash and burn, I'm not going to put on a fireman's outfit and save us. I'm going to get out of the fire, and find somewhere safe."

"Well, consider this the fire alarm," Olivia says.

"Livy," he says, grabbing her arm as she starts to get up. She turns to him, fully expecting him to tell her that he was wrong about everything. She's expecting him to tell her that he loves her, and that he was just kidding about everything that he just said. There might even be a proposal tacked on at the end.

What he really says is, "You were the easiest relationship I've ever had."

"Go fuck yourself," Livy replies.

"Now I'm sure you're not supposed to say THAT in front of a baby," Blaze says as she walks away.

He slips out a few minutes later. He doesn't want to stick around for dinner. He doesn't want to see Olivia broken.

"I hope you find what you are looking for Livy-Lou," he says as he walks down the steps of her house.

**Two Days Later**

Black Friday was spent by Ty and Olivia moving all of their belongings back to their parents' houses. That Saturday involved family-sized bags of chips, gallons of ice cream, and a series of particularly painful romantic comedies.

"Look at all these people getting married!" Olivia sighs.

"I bet it doesn't work out, though. Have you ever thought about how so many romantic comedies involve someone about to marry someone, and then they change their mind and decide to marry someone else. What makes us think they are going to get a happily ever after? They're probably just going to spend the rest of their life bobbing from relationship to relationship."

"They shouldn't call the comedies. There is nothing funny about them!" Olivia says.

Ty offers her a tissue, and she grabs one from the box.

"I was ready to be a dad," Ty says softly.

"You'll be a dad someday," Olivia assures him.

"I don't think I ever will, I mean, it's not like I'm ever going to fall in love again."

"You'll find someone else," Olivia says, even though a hard rocks forms in her stomach at the new worry that she's never going to find someone to make her a mother.

"No, I'll never find someone to love like that. That's it, it's done for me," Ty sounds so certain that Olivia can't find a way to doubt his words.

"That doesn't mean that you are never going to get to be a father," she says, "If you never end up with someone you could still have a baby. I could still help you with that."

"I could help you, too, you know. If you ever decide to take a journey into single motherhood," Ty says.

And then Livy's brain, soaked in grief and a few too many movies with a happily-ever-after said, "Why should we wait?"

"What?" Ty asks.

"We're both single. We both want to have kids. Why don't we just have kids?" Olivia asks.

Ty blinks a few times before he says, "Why don't we?"

**The Next Day**

"Dad, I want to ask you a favor, a favor that involves your job as General."

"Ok," Jack says suspiciously.

"I want to go through the Stargate."

"Son, that is an extremely valuable piece of technology that is extremely expensive to run, and takes people to extremely dangerous places. It is not to be used for a joy ride."

"Of course not. I want to go to the planet that helped you conceive Hannah."

Jack's eyebrows shoot up, and he asks a question that he knows he knows the answer too, "And why would that be?"

"I want to have a baby."

"Tyler, you just broke up Eli a few days ago, are you sure this is really the time to be making life long huge decisions that you can't even understand the magnitude of now?"

"Dad, this isn't something that I just thought of. I've wanted to be a dad for a long time. Yes, until recently my plans of being a father included Eli, but he wasn't the most important part. I've known that I've wanted to be a father my whole life, and I'm tired of waiting for it."

"Son, you're still young. There is plenty of time for this fatherhood thing, still. I was a lot older than you when you came into the world. You could wait a few years, and then be with another guy, or be by yourself and have a baby. I just don't want you to have this kid and end up regretting it in the future."

"If I do end up with someone else, which frankly I don't think is going to happen, then having a baby isn't going to get in the way of that. If I'm with a guy that can't handle the fact that I have a kid, I don't want to be with him anyway."

Jack runs a hand across his face in distress, mostly because his son is kind of winning this argument, "Maybe the guy you're with is going to want this baby to be both of yours. Maybe he'll be sad that he missed on to the first part."

"Then we'll have another. Look Dad, I don't need your permission to have a kid. Eli's dad tried to act like he had the power to make Eli do whatever he wanted. Eli believed him. I don't. You might be able to deny my request to carry this baby, but one way or the other I'm going to have it."

Jack nods his head, "Son, you do realize that you are going to need some… female parts."

"I know that I am going to have to take medicine to make me grow a uterus."

Jack chokes on air, "Ok, true, but I actually meant you're going to need an… egg… you're going to have to find a donation for an egg."

"Olivia is willing. I'm going to be donating sperm to her, so it's kind of more of a trade than a donation but…"

Jack's eyes almost bug out of his head, "Olivia? You and Olivia are going to have babies together? You break up with people you were with for a long, long time, and now you are going to make babies together?"

"Dad it's not like that. We're just friends that are going to help each other have babies, physically, emotionally…."

"How is that different from making babies together?" Jack asks.

Ty shrugs, "I don't know, your way sounded all romantic."

"Ty, this _is_ romantic; bringing a baby into the world is the most romantic thing in the world."

"Olivia and I are just friends."

"Ty, she was in love with you once, are you 100% sure that she isn't still?" Jack asks his son.

"I swear, dad, this is a friend thing. So are you going to help me or not? I mean, if you're not going to, then it's going to take a lot longer for Olivia and I both to have a kid. Plus we are going to miss out on the whole being pregnant together thing."

Jack sighs, "Son, you're an adult. A stupid adult, but an adult nonetheless. The fact that I'm not trying harder to stop you has more to do with the fact that I really don't want to be Eli's dad hurting my children by not accepting them than a sign that I actually think your actions will turn out well. Do you understand that?"

"Thank you, Daddy!" Ty says, wrapping his hands around his father.


	139. 2016 Part 1

**Three Months Later**

Vala goes to get a drink of water in the middle of the night. When she turns on the kitchen light, she sees Olivia with spray cheese and marshmallow fluff spread on an Oreo.

"No wonder you've been sick," Vala comments.

"Yeah, no wonder," Olivia says in a voice that causes Vala to do a double take, and turn back to her step-daughter. "Livy, you're not pregnant, are you?"

Olivia nods her head.

"Babe, you should have told your father and I as soon as you found out! So does Blaze know? Is that why you moved out? Wasn't he willing to man up and be a father?"

"It's not Blaze's," Olivia mutters.

Vala's brows knit together, "I never thought you'd be the cheating type."

"I didn't cheat. Who do you think I am, you?" Olivia demands, quickly hating the accusation.

"Woah! I've never cheated on anyone. At least not when there wasn't an alien parasite in my head. It's kind of the logical conclusion. You had a nasty break up and moved home two months ago. You haven't gone out with anyone since then. I find out you are pregnant, and it's not the guy you broke up with. So whose baby is it?"

"Ty's."

Vala sits in silence, and stares at Olivia for a long time. No, 'glares' would be a better word.

"Vala, it's…" Olivia starts to explain.

But Vala cuts her off, "What kind of masochist are you? It's bad enough that you fell in love with someone you knew full well you could never have. Don't give me that 'you didn't know' crap. You were his best friend, and everyone else knew since he was three. So you fall in love with someone you could never have. Then you date him. Then when that's over, you keep loving him even when you have better choices in front of you. Blaze was no winner, to be sure, but he wasn't gay. And there are a lot of men out there better than Blaze, sweetheart. Make no mistake, Livy, there are good fish in the sea beneath all the macerals. Then… you have a baby with him? You know that this relationship can never go anywhere! That you can never be happy with him! And you make a baby! How the hell did you do it, Olivia? No, I honestly want to know how you tricked that gay man into sleeping with you to make a baby."

"I didn't."

"Didn't trick him? You might not think you did, but you did!" Vala raves.

"No, I didn't sleep with him. He donated sperm. I gave him an egg. He's pregnant, too. He's actually a month farther along than I am; my first round didn't take."

"You think that changes anything I said?" Vala asks.

"Kind of, because I didn't sleep with Ty."

"Olivia, was this really about a baby? If so, fine. I support the idea of single motherhood. I think you'll be a great mother, and I'll be willing to spoil the baby silly in all the ways that grandparents do. But if this is even the tiniest bit about you being in love with Ty, or you thinking that this will win Blaze back, then babe, you've screwed up, and that baby deserves a hell of a lot better."

"I'm not a kid, Vala."

"Really, I couldn't tell, because you are living in a bedroom that you share with your ten-year-old sister. It has pink bunnies on the wall."

"That's temporary," Olivia says.

"Most people who plan babies, they wait until they are ready for them. If this baby was an accident, I would hold you and tell you that everything is going to be ok. I wouldn't care that you don't have a place of your own or a job that has medical insurance. I would take care of you, for you sake, for the babies sake. But this isn't a mistake. You chose this kid. Having a baby on purpose when you don't even have your own room is irresponsible, kid."

"Stop calling me that!"

"Then stop being one! This baby is counting on you, and you'd better get your crap in a group before it comes! If you need help with piling the crap, let me know. If you need a shoulder to cry on, pick someone's besides mine!" Vala says, getting up to leave the room. She turns back, "But don't pick your gay baby daddy!"

The kitchen led into the living room with a wide archway, so there was no door to slam. Vala's only recourse was to slam her bedroom door which had the added benefit of waking up her husband so she could vent with him.

"Your daughter is pregnant!" she raves.

"Which one?" he asks, rubbing his eyes in tiredness.

"Well, probably if it was the married one with four kids I wouldn't be this angry, and it's probably not the one who hasn't gone through puberty yet, so you guess…"

"I'm going to kill Blaze."

"Ty."

"What?"

"You want to kill the guy who got her pregnant, so you want to kill Ty."

"How did Olivia convince Ty he wasn't gay anymore?" Daniel asks, obviously impressed, and no doubt planning all sorts of bonding experiences for the man who was fated to be his son-in-law.

"Oh, he's still gay. They're having each other's baby. Olivia gave him an egg, so he could do that freaky male pregnancy thing, and he gave her sperm so she could have her little fantasy mini-Ty baby."

"Male pregnancy… so Jack knew."

"You are so missing the point of this story, babe."

"No, I'm not. My daughter destroyed her life by purposely getting pregnant before she was ready, and my best friend denied me a chance to stop her."

"So you're mad at Jack?"

"Yes! They're kids. They were pissed about a break-up. They wanted to rush forward, and make damaging life choices. He's the grown-up. He should have been the one to step in and say, 'no, stop, think about it'. I mean, she only broke up with Blaze three months ago! That is not enough time to heal and think rationally."

"That is what I tried to tell Olivia!"

"What did she say? How is she?" Daniel asks.

"Angry, but I think that was mostly because I wasn't out there dancing the jig at the great news of how I was becoming a grandma."

"She thought we'd be happy about it?"

Vala nods.

"What are her plans? Is she going to keep living here after the baby comes?"

"I don't know. I told her that she'd better get plans, and she seemed to be completely surprised by this suggestion. I don't think she's realized that at some point the baby is going to come _out _of her yet."

Daniel's head falls against the headboard, "Are all of our kids going to be this much trouble?"

Vala laughs.

"How about this? We put them in little metal cages until they get married? Huh? Good plan?"

"How are they going to find a spouse if they are in little metal cages?"

"I bring them one," he says, raising his eyebrows.

"Really? You want an arranged marriage for your kids?" Vala asks, sitting down on the bed, calm for the first time since she found out the truth of what Olivia had done.

"I don't know. My arranged marriage was pretty good, up until the death part," he says.

"Oh, sorry. I forget that you actually had an arranged marriage."

"Sometimes I do, too. Sha're feels a long way away from here."

"You're not actually suggesting we arrange marriages for our kids, are you?"

"No, I'm pretty sure that if I actually approved of anyone, that would make them immediately odious to our kids, especially the girls."

"They're going to find their one way through this," Vala assures him.

"I just wish they could manage it without breaking their hearts," Daniel says with a sigh.

"Or ours."

-0-

Ty opens up the door of his new apartment to see Eli standing there. He stares at him, full of pain, for a long moment, before he says, "You want to come in?"

"I went to see you at your parents' place, and they said that you'd moved out again. You got this place," Eli says.

Ty nods, and stands in the living room, unwilling to sit down. For the past few months, just the thought of Eli was enough to make his heart ache. Now the sight, the smell of him, it was all Ty could do not to cry.

Of course, some of that was probably the pregnancy hormones.

"How have you been?" Eli says.

"I've mostly been hanging out in the pit of despair, you?"

"The same."

"So has something changed, or have you just come here to torture me with the things I can't have?" Ty asks.

"I would never torture you on purpose," Eli says, looking down.

"Well, unless you're willing to tell you parents everything…" Ty begins.

"I did," Eli says in a tiny voice.

"What?" Ty asks in shock.

"After you left me… I was so depressed I couldn't do anything. I never even went back to seminary. I couldn't stand the thought of our place without you. They tried everything to get me up. Then, finally, they actually tried listening. I told them everything, Ty. I told them about known I was gay when I was in kindergarten. I told them about how hard I prayed that it wasn't true when I was in middle school. I told them about our friendship, and our relationship. I told them about the accountability group, and the reason why I finally decided it was okay to be gay. I told them about our marriage."

"Is it hard to clean up after brains exploding?" Ty asks.

Eli smiles, "It wasn't as bad as I'd been thinking it was all those years. They weren't even mad. They were just really, really disappointed. So we talked, and cried, and… things are getting better, Ty. They don't really approve, but they do understand me. They also think that backing away from a marriage is just as sinful as living in a homosexual one…"

"So they're still calling it sin?" Ty sneers.

Eli shrugs, "They _call_ it that, yeah, but the word doesn't hurt like it used to. They don't mean it as much as they used to mean it."

"They shouldn't mean it at all," Ty says.

"I didn't really come here to talk about my parents. I came to tell you that I was wrong when I asked you to lie to my parents for all of those years. I was really wrong when I asked you to leave. I'm sorry."

Ty flinches, "It's too late, Eli. I'm sorry, but you're too late."

"You're with someone else?" Eli asks, and he is so staggered by the news that Ty puts out his arm to keep him from falling.

"No. Are you ok, Eli?" Ty says, concerned about what his partner had revealed to him a bit earlier in the conversation about his delicate mental state.

"I'm fine," Eli says waving his hand dismissively, "How can it be too late, unless you're with someone else?"

"Eli, I'm having a baby."

A smiles crosses Eli's face, and Ty doesn't know if it's out of relief or genuine excitement about the idea of being a father.

"Really? You decided to go ahead with the baby. That's great."

"I should have waited for you."

"Ok, maybe. But I didn't exactly give you a whole lot of reason to think that I was going to come around the to cause. I can understand why you got tired of waiting. I don't blame you for getting tired of waiting. You don't have to worry about a baby coming between us. Now that I have told my parents that I'm gay and married, I'm ready to be a father," Eli laughs at himself, "Ok, that is a lie. I am nowhere near ready to be a father! But I'll get ready, we'll figure this out. How much time do we have, did you decide to go with surrogacy or adoption?"

"Eli, I'm having a baby. Like literally having a baby," Ty says, hoping he is getting the idea across to his partner. Since Eli still knows nothing about the Stargate, he has no idea how he is going to explain all of this to him.

"Surrogacy? Is Olivia the surrogate?" Eli asks, and Ty is surprised that he doesn't look angry at the thought. Ty didn't exactly think Eli would be able to handle that concept. Not that it was the most difficult pill he had to swallow.

"Eli, I'm having a baby, as in _I'm_ pregnant," he says, taking his husband's hand and placing it on his own stomach.

Eli makes a disgusted face, "Ty, this is not the time to mess around."

Ty knows that this this case, seeing is going to be believing, so he picks up his cell phone, and dials his father, "Dad. Eli is here. He's having a little trouble believing me about the origins of my baby." There is a pause before Ty says, "Yeah, I don't blame him either. You offered me a non-disclosure deal for him a while back. Is that still good? I'd like to bring him in and have him see an ultra-sound. Ok, we'll be there soon."

"Ty, you're not pregnant, because you're a man, and men don't get pregnant," Eli says with his brows raised.

"Ok, then go with me to the base."

"I don't have to go, I know it's not true!" Eli protests.

"Well, then I must be crazy, because I really believe that I am pregnant. If you come with me, you'll be able to show my father how crazy I am, and get me the help that I need."

"I didn't say you were crazy," Eli protests.

"I wouldn't blame you if you had," Ty says with a sad smile.


	140. 20162

"Wow, this base has some serious security," Eli says as they pass the fourth checkpoint. An SF salutes the young men and says to Ty, "Sir, your father has asked me to escort you to the infirmary, Sir."

"At ease, Airman," Ty says.

"Just when I had started to get over the fact that your parents were both Generals…" Eli mutters.

A few minutes later the pair finds themselves in the infirmary, and are greeted by Shelby. "I hope you don't mind. I switched with another nurse so I could help you with the ultrasound. I just couldn't wait to see how your little kiddo is doing."

Eli gives her a skeptical face, and she leads the two of them into one of the isolation rooms. Ty hops up on the table, and pulls down his shirt like he is an old hand at the process. Shelby squirts some gel on his stomach, and moves the wand over it.

The beating of the heart reaches Eli's ears a second before the grainy picture of a big headed baby comes on screen. Eli faints.

-0-

When Eli wakes up he is in the hospital bed, and Ty is sitting in a chair next to him. "Shouldn't you be the one in the hospital bed?" Eli asks.

"I'm in the midst of a perfectly normal pregnancy. You're the one who fainted."

"Men pass out, and it's not a perfectly normal pregnancy, because men _don't get pregnant!"_

"Not normally no," Ty agrees.

"Not ever!"

"My dad actually gave birth to Hannah."

"What?" Eli screeches.

"In his case it was an accident. He was dealing with a group of people who had been doing male pregnancies through science for years. They gave him some medicine which made it possible without him knowing it. I did it on purpose."

"But how is it possible? Where is the baby growing? Men don't have any way for a fetus to get the nutrients that it needs!"

"Well, there is a medicine that you take that lets you grow some female parts."

"How many freaking female parts!" Eli says.

Ty giggles, "Nothing visible to the naked eye, relax. Just an internal womb. With my dad he was implanted by mom's egg during…well, close to the natural way. With me it was all artificial. I didn't have sex with anyone."

"Livy's egg?" Eli guesses.

Ty nods his head.

"So you're telling me that you are pregnant with your ex-girlfriend's baby."

"That's not what even close to true," Ty says raising his brows at his husband.

"Ty, she was in love with you once, and I don't think that all of those feelings have left."

"She had a crush on me once, back when we were practically infants. She was over it like a second later."

"I can't believe you're pregnant," Eli says shaking his head.

"I know, I hope this isn't too much to handle," Ty says nervously.

"I'm not thrilled about hour our baby is entering the world, but I'm really glad it is. It is our baby right? I mean, I can consider it our baby?"

Ty grins at him, "Definitely."

There is a knock at the door, and Ty goes to open it revealing his father. "I heard there was a medical problem involving civilians. Are you ok?" he asks his son.

"I'm fine, Eli fainted," Ty says.

Eli jumps off the bed he was placed on, and starts at attention, "I'm find, sir."

"Good to hear it," Jack says with a slight giggle, "Passing out is the understandable reaction to finding out that your husband is pregnant, and people you've known for years actually travel to other planets, don't worry about it."

"Funny, sir," Eli says.

Ty flinches.

"Oh, you weren't going to tell him the part about aliens?" Jack asks in surprise.

"Not exactly."

"See, I thought when you asked for full security clearance, you were going all out."

"Nope."

"What exactly are you two talking about?" Eli asks.

"Well, a long time ago, in a country far far away…." Ty begins, while Jack slips out the door with a sheepish look on his face.

When the whole story has been told, Eli looks at his husband and says, "So you're telling me that aliens made you pregnant?"

Ty nods.

"Why didn't you just tell me that?"

"Because it's a little hard to believe."

"You told me that you were pregnant from some strange government experiment. How is pregnant by aliens that much stranger?"

Ty shrugs.

"This is like an episode of the X-Files: either the aliens or the government made Scully pregnant, and we're not sure which. Except, of course, for the fact that Scully was a woman, so it was all a great deal less strange."

"I'm sorry I wasn't honest with you," Ty says, capturing Eli's hand.

"Do you have any other big secrets? Is your dog really bigfoot?"

"Well… maybe a werewolf."

**The Next Day**

Olivia still knew Blaze's schedule by heart. Even with that it took four tries to run into him by accident. Her mother was right, it was time to get her life sorted out. She didn't still want to be sharing a room with her sister when the baby came.

Three's a crowd.

"Olivia," he says when he sees her from a distance. He stops cold, like he's seeing a ghost, and for the first time since their relationship hit the fan she is sure that he was hurt, and not just her.

"How are you doing, Blaze?"

"Ok, and you?" he asks.

"Really great. I'd like to have coffee with you, and talk about a couple of things," she says.

"I don't know if that would be such a good idea," he says, tentatively taking a little step back like she was a snake who might bite him.

"It's just coffee, Blaze."

"Ok," he agrees, cautious.

-0-

Olivia and Blaze are sitting under a tree a little while later.

"You invited me out for coffee, and then you're not even going to have coffee?" Blaze asks.

"Well, a smoothie is healthier, and the idea of coffee is was symbolic."

"What was it a symbol for?" Blaze says.

"Well, maybe not a symbol, but… a cultural convention, maybe even a cliché. I thought we could share some stuff that's going on in our lives."

"Well, it turns out that I'm actually going to graduate this spring. My roommate smells like a gym sock all the time."

"I'm pregnant."

Blaze stares at her in a silence for a couple beats before he says, "Ok, you win."

"Blaze, I should explain…"

"Tell me you didn't do it on purpose, Liv! I mean, I thought we were all doubled up on the birth control, and supper safe. So I'm hoping you didn't let this happen."

"I got pregnant on purpose, but…" Olivia begins.

"Jesus Christ, Liv! We are so not ready to be parents!"

"Blaze, it's isn't yours."

"Then why are you telling me?" Blaze says, looking away and taking a deep breath of relief.

"It's a test tube baby. I just wanted you to know that I'm becoming a mother."

"You're not ready. I told you that you weren't ready, and you should have listened."

"I _am _ready!"

"No, you're not," Blaze says with a shake of his head, "Where are you living? Still at your folks place?"

Olivia nods, reluctantly.

"Do you know anything about how to raise a kid? Do you know what you're going to do with it after it's born? Are you going back to work? Are you staying home with it? Do you have a day care lined up?"

Olivia protests, "I have months to get ready for the baby."

"When you plan for a baby, you should be ready before it comes along. Liv, who is this baby's father?"

"I told you, I had the baby through a sperm bank."

"It's Ty's, isn't it?"

Olivia doesn't say anything, but he doesn't need the confirmation. He nods his head, "Like it wasn't bad enough that you were in love with your best friend who is gay. You had to have his baby, too."

Olivia starts to protest, but Blaze stands up. "Look, I'm done with this conversation. Let me tell you how this is going to go down. You've been reading too many Janette Oke novels. Having a baby doesn't result in guys falling in love with you. Dudes are terrified of babies. Your pregnancy does not mean that we get back together. It does not mean that Ty will magically become your straight love monkey. It doesn't mean that your life gets a fairy tale ending. I hope to God it does mean that you grow up and start making better life choices, that poor kid deserves it," he says as he walks away.

"I have now been told to get my life together by a former space pirate and a guy who only owns one pair of underwear."

-0-

"Where is Olivia?" Daniel asks his wife.

"She's up in our room, and she's not coming," Anne says.

"Well, that's mature," Daniel says with a role of her eyes.

"We can't let her do that. She's pregnant, she needs to eat," Vala points out.

Daniel hands her a plate.

"Why do I have to take it to her?"

"You're the only one in the room with previous experience with pregnant mood swings," Daniel points out.

Vala glares at him, but grabs the plate.

"Olivia, I brought you some food."

"I don't want it," she mopes from behind the door.

"Well, my granddaughter does."

Olivia opens it up, and takes the plate out of Vala's hands. She doesn't slam the door in Vala's face, and that's all the invitation that Vala needs she comes in and sits on the bed.

"You okay, sweetie?"

"No, I'm a loser who isn't ready to have a kid, and is endangering it by not eating," Olivia says.

"Wow, you're hard on yourself."

"I'm paraphrasing you and Blaze."

"You talked to Blaze?"

"Yeah," Olivia says despondently.

"How did you think that conversation was going to go? You didn't think that you were getting back together with him?"

Olivia finches.

"Oh, Livy. How did you think that having a baby with another guy was going to make him decide he wanted to have kids and be with you?"

"I thought that he would fall in love with the idea of having a baby," Olivia says.

Vala sighs. "Okay, so, kiddo, so the honey didn't trap the bear, what do we think of the honey now?"

"What?" Olivia asks.

"You tried to trap you boyfriend with a baby. It didn't work. What about the baby?"

"I didn't just have a baby to get Blaze. I love it."

"Good."

"Even though I'm really unqualified to take care of it."

"No parent has ever been qualified to take care of their kid, ever. You'll be fine."

"I'm going to need some help."

"And that is what family is for."

"I'm going to move out. I'd like you to help me find a good place."

"You don't have to move out, you know. I know that I was annoyed with you last night, but I was just trying to help you get ready to grow up. I love you, Olivia; I want you to stay here."

"I need to leave. It's the grown up thing to do."

Vala sits down, and wraps her arms around her daughter, "It's going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay, love."


	141. 20163

**Two Days Later**

"Just to be clear, when you told me that you told your parents everything," Ty says as he stands before the door to Eli's parents' house.

"Well, they don't know that you are the one carrying our baby, but besides that, we are good to go," Eli says.

They stand before the door for another couple of seconds before Eli says, "Are you ready?"

"No," Ty replies, nonetheless pressing the doorbell.

No sooner has the melody rung out than the door opens, and June pulls Ty into a hug before her son. Robert is a bit more reserved, settling for a handshake after a moment of uncertainty.

"Please come in," June says practically, pulling both of the boys into the living room.

"How are you doing?" Robert asks the room in general, after they have all had a seat and sat in uncomfortable silence for a bit.

After a few seconds of silence, during which everyone assumes that questions was directed at someone else, Ty finally responds, "Really good."

"I'm sorry about the way you were treated the last time you were here. We didn't know," June says softly.

"I don't understand the logic of my son's husband coming out to me, and he not doing so," Robert mutters.

"Eli wanted to see how you reacted to my news before he decided if he was going to share his own," Ty says, and a moment later he realizes that this is more honesty than his husband would have liked him to share.

"Eli," June says, with a sad apology in his voice.

"I want you guys to know that our son really loves you. He would give just about anything to be the son that you really wanted," Ty says.

"I'm pretty happy with the son I got," Robert says with a tiny half-smile, which is the first natural thing in the whole conversation.

"I shouldn't have told you to move out of Eli's house. No matter if he was gay or not, it wasn't my place to say anything. If I'd known it would break his heart, if I'd known that I was breaking apart a marriage… I wouldn't have…" Robert starts.

"I'm sorry we weren't more honest with you," Ty says.

"Eli says you came out to your parents when you were in Junior High," June says.

Ty nods.

"I suppose we could have had that too, if we'd been a lot more accepting of our son," June says.

"We couldn't accept what we didn't know about," Robert grumbles.

"Well, he couldn't very well tell us when he knew what we thought about it, could he?" June says with the undertone of an argument that has gone round many times.

"I always wanted to have a marriage ceremony," Ty interrupts. "Eli wouldn't hear of it unless you guys would come. Of course, that wasn't an option until recently, because you didn't know about us. We're not legally married, but I'd like to be. Would you guys come if we planned a wedding?"

"Of course," June says, and Robert nods. It's hard to tell if he's being choked with the emotion of a proud father or of anger.

"When would the wedding be?" June asks.

"Soon, I think. We'd want to do it before the baby came, right?" Ty asks, looking over at Eli.

Eli nods his head.

"Speaking of the baby, we want to meet the mother," June says with a smile.

"You know that she's not going to be involved with raising it, right? You know that it is our baby?" Eli asks.

"It shares her genes. We should be allowed to meet the person that contributed half of the genetics to our grandchild," Robert says.

"That's no problem, I'm sure Olivia won't mind," Ty says.

"So, Ty, did you get a job in town?" June asks.

"Yes, I'm working at an engineering firm," Ty says with a slight smile. He's about to launch into a discussion of what work is like; that topic seems safer than any they have treaded on this far.

He's interrupted by Robert, who says, "Where are you going to live?"

"We haven't really discussed that yet," Eli breaks in.

"Are you going back to seminary, Eli?"

"Well, it's too late to start this semester," Ty points out.

"Are you going back next semester?" Robert presses.

"We haven't really got that all figured out yet," Ty says.

"You've got a baby on the way, you'd better get all of this figured out," Robert demands.

"Robert," his wife scolds.

"It's ok, that's fair," Ty says, taking Eli's hand, which he noticed was shaking, "Before Eli entered the picture, I did have it figured out. There is a great day-care next to my work that I was planning on putting the little tyke in when he was old enough. I've got paternity leave to cover until then. My apartment has a two bedrooms, and I've already started collecting stuff for the baby. Eli just found out about this kid a week ago, and since then he's been so buried in pregnancy and parenting books that he hasn't had time to think about the future. Give us a little time, and we'll make sure the kid is taken care of."

"Why is Eli reading pregnancy books?" June asks, her brow furred with suspicion that clearly shows this isn't the first time she's heard something from the pair of them that has made her wonder.

"We're very involved with the surrogate. That's our baby inside of her, after all," Eli says quickly.

Ty can't help but admire how quickly his husband has picked up the cover story.

Ty launches into some work stories when the silence lasts, and the uncomfortable part of the evening is past.

**The Day After That**

Eli is surprised when Ty rolls out of bed early the next morning, "It's Saturday," he says, patting the bed next to him in an invitation for his partner to return.

"I know, but I have birthing class."

"You can't go, you're a boy," Eli points out, not yet fully awake.

"I know, and I'm not even going to have this baby in a painful way that will involve careful breathing, but Olivia isn't so lucky."

Eli is fully awake at that comment, "You're her birth coach?"

"Well, it's not exactly as if she has someone else."

"She should have thought about that before she got pregnant! I'm not exactly comfortable with my husband cradling his pregnant ex-girlfriend between his pregnant legs!"

"She is not my ex-girlfriend! She and I agreed to have these kids together. To support each other as two friends. I'm really lucky to have you in my life. I am not going to need her emotional support as much as I would have, but she still will. I'm not going to desert her!"

"I'm coming too," Eli says firmly.

"What? No, you can't!" Ty protests.

"Of course I can, and I'm going to."

"She knows that you don't really like her."

"I like her fine. I like her even better when she is far away from my husband."

"Eli, there are going to be other people there. You can't just go in and be all passive-aggressive and petty. Other people are not going to understand the complicated things that we are going through, and they are just going to think you are a jerk if you do that."

"I am going to treat Olivia just fine."

"I don't understand why you need to come at all; if you trusted me, you'd be fine with me going out and spending a couple of hours with a friend that's of the opposite gender I would never be interested in.

"Ty, I trust you…"

"It's her you don't trust. That's an old line. One that's traditionally used by fathers to their daughters."

"I'm just practicing, I am going to be a father soon, you know…"

"Behave yourself," Ty warns.

-0-

"Hey, Olivia, I hope you don't mind, but Eli would really like to come with us," Ty says when he opens the door, hoping that getting the statement out of the way right away is going to make it less shocking, or at the very least not give her time to object.

"Eli?" Olivia says with a raised brow, "Since when are you back with Eli?"

"It happened not too long ago."

"Well, that's great… I just can't believe how great that is," Olivia goes to hug Eli, "I bet it was a bit of a shock…" Olivia says, looking from her own stomach to Ty's.

"To find out that in the few months I was away, my husband had fathered two children, yeah, 'shock' is the word that I would use," Eli says.

"Especially considering how," Olivia says.

"No joke! You two have grown up with this sort of thing. It's all brand new for me."

"It's really nice of you to be willing to come along, but Ty and I are really fine doing this by ourselves," Olivia says sweetly.

"I'd really rather come," Eli says, and even though the words are perfectly polite, there is no mistaking the meaning behind them.

Olivia blushes, and wishes that the accusation were false. She wished that in her heart of hearts she had absolutely no feelings for Ty. "Please come," she says, because there is no better way to get over someone as to watch them be in love with someone else.

**The Next Morning**

Eli is awaken to the sound of throwing up. He rushes to the bathroom out of instinct, but once he gets there, he is unsure what to do. He stands there awkwardly for a long moment, but taking a couple of steps back into the bedroom.

"I'm sorry, I didn't… you don't have enough hair to hold."

"You didn't have to get up," Ty says, standing up from the floor.

"I felt sorry for you. You're supposed to do something… to show that sympathy."

"Did you read that in one of those books?" Ty asks.

"Yeah, and it sounds right."

"I would honestly rather throw up without an audience, if it's all the same to you," Ty says.

Eli looks down, "I don't know if I'm going to be any good at this."

"Eli, you are a great man, and you're going to be a great father."

Eli fidgets, "Ty, I know that you wanted to send our kid to day care…"

Ty interrupts him before he can get any farther, "I just told your parents what my plan was before you entered the picture. We're going to decide what happens to this kid together, it's both of ours."

"I don't know how you feel about a stay-at-home dad. I mean… you might think that they are lazy or whatever," he mutters.

"No, I think raising a kid is a really important job, more than worthy of the devotion of the resources of a parent. I just don't think I want to do it right now. I'm sorry, Eli, but I just started this job. Besides, if you're going back to school… not that you have to, it just sounded like you were going to last night. I just mean, with a baby, on the way one of us has to work."

"I was talking about me being the stay-at-home dad," Eli says.

Ty looks at him in shock, "Really? Are you sure you'd want to do that?"

"Yeah, but I'd probably mess the kid up or something…" he begins.

"No way, you would be an amazing father. It's just that a couple of months ago you didn't even want to have kids, and now you want to spend all day with them. I worried that the baby would drive you batty in a week."

"It's not that I didn't want kids, it was just that I was afraid of all the things that I would have to do in order to get them."

"Are you going to be ok with putting your life on hold? If you wanted to move, we could, and you could go back to seminary."

"You were just talking about how you were just getting established in your job."

"I moved once, I can do it again if I need to."

"That's sweet, but I'm don't look at it as putting my life on hold. It's been on hold for a while. Marrying you, raising a kid, all of that is moving forward. Besides, I thought I could take some classes on-line. I don't know about a full load with the kid, but some, anyway. I might have to switch schools, but I've kind of been thinking about that anyway."

"You came out with your sexuality, and now you want to come out with your theology?"

"Something like that, yeah."

"It sounds like an amazing plan, Eli. If you're sure you want to do this, I'm game. I just hope that you don't get bored in the meantime."

"Bored? I have a wedding to plan, and a baby to prepare for. I am going to be anything but bored!"


	142. 2017

**Two Months Later**

"What are the chances that the girl ends up with the girl baby and the boys end up with the boy baby?" Olivia asks Eli as their babies enjoy tummy time on the floor before her.

"Well, that's a simple compound probability ½ x ½ = ¼," Eli replies.

"You are really starved for adult conversation, aren't you?" Olivia giggles.

"Don't get me wrong. I am loving being a stay-at-home dad. It's just that by the time Ty gets home from work, I have to work on my night classes. There isn't exactly a lot of time for adult interaction."

"Do you regret the way these kids came into the world? I guess that isn't the right word for it, since you didn't have a choice in it, but you know what I mean? Are you sorry it happened like that?"

"You know, Liv, I'm really not. It's right that you're his mother, and I never would have chosen that on my own. How is single parenthood working out for you?"

"It's ok. When I first discovered that a baby wasn't my magic ticket to romance I was pretty devastated, but Mollie and I, we're going to be ok."

"You ever think of having more kids?"

Olivia laughs, "I think one kid is going to be enough for me, at least for a long while."

"Ty, and I were talking about having more kids… in a couple years."

"One with your genes?" Olivia asks.

"Yeah, Ty insists on it more than I do. I mean, I feel like Isaiah is my son. I think if I loved him any more than I already do, it might actually kill me."

"I know what you mean," Olivia smiles, "Still, carrying on the gene pool, that wouldn't be a bad thing. I'd be willing to help you guys with that, you know. I could give an egg, or carry it if you prefer. I know you were a little freaked out by the male pregnancy thing."

"I was, but Ty wasn't. He actually enjoyed it. It grew on me in the end. I mean, if we did surrogacy, the baby wouldn't be in the house with us, you know, until it was born. I couldn't just roll over in bed, and put my hand on the baby in the middle of the night."

Olivia looks down at his words.

"I'm sorry, I know that some people are squeamish about the whole gay men sleeping together. I didn't know you were in that group, I won't mention it again."

"No, it wasn't that," Olivia looks up at him, genuinely shocked that he would think that, "I just wish there had been someone to feel Mollie in the middle of the night."

"Sorry," Eli says.

"No, it's fine," she says.

"So in a couple years, are you going to be willing to give us an egg, and pretend to be pregnant?" he asks.

"Yeah," she says.

"And if you ever change your mind, and want to give this one a sibling, both Ty and I would be willing to help you out."

"You'd be ok with Ty helping me out?" she asked with raised eyebrows. Most people assume that she doesn't have a crush on Ty anymore. As far as she knows, it is only herself and Eli who are aware of the truth.

"I would, because whatever there is, or was between you, I know that neither one of you would act on it. So… I don't know, Liv, we're a family. I don't know how we could become more a family."

"And what's a little semen between family, right?" she asks.

He giggles.

"If I have another one, I'm going to have to use your stuff, Eli, because the world needs more boys like you."


	143. 2030 The End

"Well, look on the bright side," Daniel says.

"My daughter is in the infirmary, with a high fever, and reading minds; what exactly would the bright side be?" she asks.

"At least we know it wasn't your kissing a boy that caused you to get sick when you turned sixteen," he says.

"Very funny," Cassie snarls.

Daniel realizes that his attempts to cheer up his daughter may have backfired, so he lightly grabs her hand and says, "Honey, it's going to be okay. The Tok'ra are going to help her."

Just then, the Tok'ra comes out of the infirmary, shaking his head.

Cassie rushes in there to see her daughter tearless. "I know what you're thinking, mom. So you don't have to hide it."

"I tried really hard not think anything sad that you might overhear," Cassie says.

"I wouldn't even need the ability to read minds to know what you are thinking. All the brews that the scientists thought up didn't work, and the Tok'ra didn't work. I'm going to die."

"Honey, we don't know that for sure," Cassie objects.

"Come on mom, let's be serious. Do you even have anything left to try? No, you're out of ideas. So I have one last request before I get too out of it to do anything. I want to say goodbye, to the whole crazy SG-family."

Cassie nods, and heads off to get everything arranged. It is no small task, with how much the family has expanded in recent years.

-0-

The O'Neill family arrives first. Jack is looking his age for the first time that Anne can remember. It happened when he retired, finally. He's thinking about how it should be him dying, and not her. That she's too young. That he should have figured out some way to save her. He's been in command so long that he honestly believes that it is his job to fix anything that goes wrong.

His wife, Sam, is done being tempted by big projects all over the galaxy. No more flying cities of spaceships, or politics for her to try to control. She's in charge of the SGC, now, her husband's old post. She thinks it's peaceful, easy, compared to the way it used to be when there were enemies always at the gate. She likes it that way.

Ty and his family are there, too. Ty is thinking about how unfair it is that she has to die before she's even lived. Eli is thinking about the fact that she is probably reading his mind, and worried about what she is going to find there, but even after a gentle probe she discovers no objectionable secrets.

Their children, while not being exactly particularly young, are so innocent that they don't realize that she is dying, and what a big deal it is.

Emma comes too, although in recent years she's been missing far more team events than she comes to. Now that she has a husband and kids of her own (who don't come) she doesn't feel the pull between the two families of her childhood as strongly as she used to.

Hannah is there with her husband and three boys. Anne was particularly eager to use her new talent to get a look inside the head of this cool soldier, but Hannah is honest to a fault, and everything that she thought was things that she would easily say.

Jenny is crying inconsolably. She apologizes that the rest of her family isn't here. She couldn't bear the thought of her kids being this close to death, and her husband was willing to stay with them. Jenny's emotions might be a great deal more blubbery than her sisters, but she hides them no better.

The Dunns came in next, and Anne is shocked to find out that Grandpa Teal'c is just as peaceful inside of his head as he is on the outside. She has always kind of figured that inside of his head, there was constant chatter. Instead, it was like ocean waves; peaceful, loud, rhythmic.

Meditation. Constant meditation.

Tammy comes in with her kids, but they don't stay long. There is a list of things that they have to do that makes Anne's head ache just to think about it.

Becky sits next to her, and holds her head. She's thinking a million thoughts about all of the things that Anne is going to miss, and they are even sadder than the ones that Anne already thought of herself. Becky is also a little pissed that Cassie didn't think of this before she had Anne.

Anne knows she was a mistake. That was the first thing she mind read when she got this power. How badly Cassie never meant to have her. How she almost aborted her. Anne was furious when she found out. But she understood. It's hard to watch someone you love die.

Anne isn't sorry that she was born, though. She isn't sorry that she got a chance to live.

Luke and Lexi come next. Their spouses and children were left behind with the rebel Jaffa. While neither of the twins actually became Jaffa, at least not biologically, they were accepted into the culture. Anne realizes exactly how a part of the culture they are now that she can see inside of their brains. They are as calm and full of meditation as their father's.

Vala locks eyes with her, and Anne is pretty sure she could read the emotions in the older woman's eyes even if she hadn't had the ability to read minds. Vala has suffered a lot, more than anyone ever should have, and this is the worst suffering she's had in a long time.

Grandpa Daniel comes in, bashful of what she might find inside of his mind. As had as she probes, she finds nothing more than hieroglyphics and the memory of dead people - ancient, and personal.

Olivia brings Ben. They're having a baby, Anne catches the thought. Olivia raises her eyebrow, and shakes her head just a little.

Anne nods her head. Olivia hadn't meant to think it. They were going to keep it all silent until after this was all over.

"By that I mean, until you're all better," Olivia mentally clarified.

Olivia's daughter starts playing with Ty and Eli's kids as soon as they are in the same room. Daniel remembers with fondness that that was how Olivia and Ty were when they were that age.

Her uncles Will and Drew are thinking about work. Will's wife and Drew's girlfriend are thinking about work too.

Claire is holding her new daughter in her arms. She doesn't say a word, but Anne can read her thoughts. She's sad thinking about what she would feel like if her baby was sick. How she would want to rip the world apart at its seams.

Anne doesn't doubt her ability to do it. She just wishes that ripping the world apart at the seams would do some good.

Anne's big sister Aaliyah is an interesting mind to look into. A lot of people who meet Aaliyah nowadays don't even know she's autistic, at least until they try to have a deep conversation with her. Inside her mind, it's still all pictures, not words. It seems random at first, but the more time you spend inside of her brain, the more the internal logic of it all wins out, and it all starts to make sense.

Keisha and her husband doesn't say long, because her four rambunctious boys seem to view the infirmary equipment as a playground. There is no room in her mind for anything other than thoughts like, "My God, he's going to _eat_ it."

Jayla, a lawyer, is practicing her argument in court. At first, Anne is offended. She would have thought her sister cared for her more than that.

Then in a moment where she forgets her argument, the real reason behind it slips through. Jayla is terrified she'll start to cry if her mind isn't constantly occupied.

After a while they are all ushered out of the room by Cassie, and Anne is left alone with her father.

She wonders why Rya'c is still there.

He tries to read in her face if she wants company or not.

She smiles at him, and he sits down in the chair.

"Do you mind if I kel-no-reem?" he asks.

"Can I join you?" she asks, and at first she thinks it that she is only asking, because whether she wants to or not, she is likely to join him when she can read minds.

Within a few seconds, though, she is swimming the waves of meditation even more deeply than her father. It is the first peace that she has had since the disease caused her to fall over at her birthday party a few days ago.

She opens her eyes.

"Did you get some sleep? You were out for a few hours, and we weren't sure if you were meditating or just sleeping," Anne's mother asks from the chair where her father was when she'd closed her eyes.

"I think it was meditation. Mom, can you do me a favor? Think something?" Anne asks.

"I remember when I was sick it relieved the pressure inside of me a little bit when I could use my power. I'll give you a nice buried thought to pull out. Don't get too excited, it's not a secret," she says, looking at her daughter.

"I don't have any idea what you are thinking."

"Really?" Cassie asks skeptically.

"Seriously, take my temperature, I bet its down."

"You think you're cured?" Cassie asks.

"Yes, I think it was the meditation," she says.

"You're not even a real Jaffa."

"I realize I've never had a Goa'uld in my stomach, but that's not all there is to being a Jaffa. They're different even before that happens, and I have as much Jaffa in me as this disease," Anne points out.

"Anne, I don't want you to get your hopes up."

"Run all the tests that you want, mom; I know the truth," she insists.

**The Next Day**

"You know what I'm thinking?" Cassie asks her daughter.

Anne shakes her head.

"Didn't think so, but I just wanted to make sure that none of your special talents made it out of the illness."

"So I really am cured?" Anne asks in excitement.

"You really are. So now that you are going to live, what do you want to do?"

"Everything!" Anne says.

**The End!**

**Thank you to all my readers who stuck with me during what has turned out to be a very long story indeed!**


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